discussion speech
Self-disclosure is the process of revealing yourself to another person . Social Pentration Theory argues that we have different layers of disclosure depending up the closeness of the relationship. In the public layers we offer general observable information (e.g., age, gender, employment, major) in our communication with others. In the personal layers we disclose more details that might include your basic attitudes, beliefs, and interests. Finally, in the intimate core we disclose much more personal insights such as values, strongly held beliefs, fears, and your self-concept and self-esteem. Consider a close friendship. In a two well developed paragraphs (14-20 sentences) describe how this friendship moved from a the public layers to the personal and even possibly the intimate levels of self-disclosure. Please provide some specific examples of your communication behaviors that you engaged in at each level of disclosure.
Your initial post is due Wed. at 11:59pm. Once you post you will be able to see others replies. Please read and comment on at least three other students posts.
My friends answers
I have two friends that I have known since we were in elementary school, Mars and Joci. As kids, we were pretty close but it wasn't until we were in high school that we started to get closer. We talked more, saw each other outside of school, and just got to know each other better than we ever did before. We hadn't known the deeper, more emotional things about each other because we had only gotten to know one another on a basic level.
It took a few years of us being close, drifting apart, and then coming back to each other for us to get to where we are now. Over the years we disclosed our personal layers, still not having gotten to really open up with each other. The time that we finally got to disclosing our more intimate level was when it got to a point were we argued more than we got along. It took the three of us coming together and having a pretty long talk for us to finally move past the drama and get back to being ourselves. When we went through things like this, arguments between the three of us or even situations that involve other people, we disclosed our more personal insights. Though they were drama-filled, it was when we shared the things about us that we were scared to at first. All of our fears, how we felt about ourselves and each other, everything positive and negative. After having gone through the levels of self-disclosure, I now consider these girls more sisters than just best friends.
Phoebe Jenkins
My husband and I’s friendship moved from the public layer of self-disclosure to intimate levels of intimate self-disclosure gradually. When we first met, we only disclosed our public layers. We initially talked about my major in college and his career in the Army. We also talked about our ages and my job as a retail merchandiser. However like most people, we didn’t discuss our personal layers until we were more comfortable with each other.
As we got closer, we slowly disclosed more and more personal layers about ourselves. For example we started talking about our interests in music, sports, and attitudes towards life. While my husband had a go with the flow attitude, he soon realized I liked to plan ahead. As we disclosed our personal layers more, we gradually began to disclose our intimate layers. While we still discussed our personal layers, our intimate layers were mixed into the conversation. For example we would talk about our beliefs in treating people with kindness which lead us to disclose our religion which was part of our intimate layers. When we talked about our public layers, we listened to each other more than trying to steer the conversation towards ourselves. When we talked about our personal layers, we became a little more passive about things the other said that we did not agree with. However when we talked about our intimate layers, the conversation would turn passive aggressive when we had major differences in beliefs. While this only happened once, but each stage of self-disclosure was accompanied by different communication behaviors.