What of the following is a reason you might avoid self-disclosure with another person?

A Caveat on Self-Disclosure Pertaining to Cultural Diversity

Self-disclosure of spiritual beliefs falls under the broader topic of self-disclosure. As delineated in earlier chapters, self-disclosure (sometimes called self-transparency) is an engagement technique that can powerfully backfire. Consequently, in most instances I do not recommend self-disclosure (other than appropriate material regarding professional credentials and experience) unless one feels it isnecessary for engagement with a specific patient (in my opinion, a relatively rare situation). It should be noted that there are differences of opinion in the field regarding the use and utility of self-disclosure and quite competent experts may disagree with me.

Before examining the pros and cons of self-disclosure regarding spirituality, let me briefly address the topic of self-disclosure as it pertains to cross-cultural concerns in a more generic sense. Regarding cross-cultural issues, I believe that there are some caveats to the general principles and dictums described in earlier chapters and directly above:

In the first place, sometimes cultural self-disclosure is impossible to avoid from the obvious fact that the patient can readily recognize the sex and race of an interviewer from mere physical observation.

Secondly, it has become commonplace for patients to Google or hunt for information on social media about a clinician. Keep in mind that any material that you post on the web may become an inadvertent act of self-disclosure to a current or future patient. In my opinion, clinicians should be extremely careful as to what they share on the web about themselves, especially personal preferences regarding popular culture, their interests, and family information.

Third, some clinicians feel that carefully chosen, and quite selective, sharing of cultural background is sometimes of use in engagement.91–94 Indeed, in certain cultures such as the Native American culture, some information, such as where the interviewer is from, is expected to be offered by the interviewer.95 In the subset of cross-cultural interviewing, I personally believe that the dictum, “Do not self-disclose unless one feels it isnecessary for engagement with a specific patient” can be softened just a bit to, “Do not self-disclose unless one feels it isparticularly useful for engagement with a specific patient.”

For example, we saw this principle deftly illustrated regarding Ben and his therapist, as they successfully navigated a point of disengagement caused by joint confusion regarding the role of “time” as viewed by Native American traditions as opposed to the cultural background of the therapist. If you will recall, Ben spontaneously shared a disturbing racial slur by a college professor to which the therapist shared her own generic encounters with racist stereotypes (she had a mixed heritage of Asian American/African American) when she commented, “I used to get that kind of stuff all the time, stereotyping I mean. I had professors who were always shocked that I wasn't good in math, you know, because anyone who is one of those ‘Asian types’ is naturally gifted in math” (seepages e130–e131 for context of the interview). The utilization of this generic self-disclosure was well timed, for I believe it provided a common hardship ground that further cemented their relationship. It was used in a situation where a cultural disconnect was occurring and it seemed to help with the transformation of this moment, hence its appropriateness.

Abstract

Self-disclosure is the process through which people deliberately reveal personal information to others. After a glimpse of the history of the concept, this article reviews the functions of self-disclosure, its positive and negative aspects, and its relationships with gender and liking. Attention is then given to the question of self-disclosure online, to honesty in disclosing in this context, and to disinhibition effects in internet exchanges. Respect and protection of privacy in the context of self-disclosure are addressed. Effects of self-disclosure for well-being and for emotion regulation, as well as social and collective consequences of self-disclosure, are examined in detail.

Self-disclosure

Self-disclosure was identified as a key strategy for forming, as well as maintaining, friendships. Perhaps not surprisingly, when a friendship begins to deteriorate, the decline is reflected in the friends' self-disclosure. According to one program of research, friends tend to avoid personal, intimate self-disclosure when their relationship is deteriorating. For example, in one of study, participants recorded their interactions with a friend over a 2-week period. Disengaging friendships were characterized by less effective and less personal communication than growing friendships. It is unclear whether the avoidance of intimate self-disclosure is a cause of friendship decline or whether friendship deterioration causes people to restrict the intimacy of their disclosures. This is an issue that can only be addressed by longitudinal data in which patterns of self-disclosure and reports of deterioration are tracked over time.

Self-Disclosure

Self-disclosure, or the sharing of personal information with another person, is a central feature of many friendships, particularly in adolescence. This is consistent with a major concern that arises at this stage of development, namely self-exploration and the development of identity. Sharing high levels of intimate information can be risky unless the friend can be relied upon to treat information as confidential and not share it with others. Through reciprocated self-disclosure, children form a sense of emotional closeness and acquire extensive knowledge about one another. Part of a shared history of a friendship is not just the activities or events that friends share together but the detailed and intimate knowledge they have of the other person. As a result, friends know far more about one another than do nonfriends.

One interesting complexity about self-disclosure deserves comment. Although friendships that are high in self-disclosure are more likely to be close friendships, co-ruminating with friends, or excessively discussing problems and focusing on the negative feelings associated with those problems, may have negative emotional consequences for children and adolescents, especially girls. To illustrate, although co-rumination is associated with higher-quality friendships for boys and girls, it is also associated with higher levels of anxiety and depression for girls.

2.4.2 Self-disclosure

A large research literature exists on self-disclosure in conversations and, in particular, gender differences in self-disclosure. Dindia and Allen (1992) conducted a meta-analysis of these studies. Across 205 studies, women self-disclosed more, but the difference was small (d=−.18). Patterns of self-disclosure depend on the sex of the target. There is no gender difference in self-disclosure to a male target (d=.00), whereas the gender difference is more substantial for a female target (d=−.35). Patterns also depend on the relationship between the two people engaged in the conversation. The gender difference in self-disclosure is trivial when the conversation is between strangers (d=−.07) and is found mainly when the conversation is with a friend (d=−.28), a spouse (d=−.22), or a parent (d=−.26).

Communicating About Oneself to Others

Sharing information about oneself, or self-disclosure, is a central avenue of interpersonal communication and another way to create intimacy in relationships. Self-disclosure is defined as personal information about oneself that is communicated to another. Disclosure differs in terms of its breadth, depth, and duration. Breadth refers to how many different topics are covered in the disclosure, depth to how personal or intimate the level of disclosure is, and duration to the length of the actual disclosure.

A common way for people to disclose information about themselves is to construct an account. An account is a package of impressions, perceptions, attributions, emotions, and description, formed into a story. Someone would develop an account about an event in his or her life in order to gain a sense of control and meaning around the event. Sharing that account with others is a way of giving out information about yourself, helping others to understand you, or influencing others' impressions of you. People may construct accounts about other people's behavior as well and share those accounts for the same reasons: to give out information about the leading players in those accounts or to influence others' impressions of either the account maker or the actors in the story.

Self-disclosure is a key concept in social penetration theory. Social penetration theory describes the process by which people develop relationships. As two people get to know each other, there is usually a social exchange as people take turns disclosing. One person's mild disclosure often triggers this exchange. The second person in the interaction can then choose to disclose in return or not. If so, there may be a continuing spiral of increasing intimacy between the two people. These disclosures gradually become more intimate and involve more depth. Through this process, the communication partners uncover information about each other, developing a multilayered understanding of the other that serves as a foundation for the relationship. Thus, one major purpose of disclosing personal information is establishing friendship or intimacy with another.

A second use of self-disclosure is as a social strategy, revealing or withholding information in order to obtain a goal. For example, you might share a sympathetic story about yourself in order to get someone to assist you in a task or to talk your way out of a negative consequence of some kind. In contrast, you might disclose your pride in a success in order to make a good impression at a job interview.

Disclosure can also be used as a catharsis, or a venting of emotion. There is research demonstrating that disclosure of this kind can be therapeutic, if an empathetic listener receives it. Early theories of self-disclosure assumed that this type of disclosure was always beneficial and that the willingness to self-disclose was a sign of mental health. Now, however, it is clear that disclosure is more complex than this, and that there are several risks involved in the decision to self-disclose. There is a risk of rejection by the listener, loss of personal control over the information shared, and of embarrassing the listener.

Self-disclosure is a discretionary behavior; that is, people control how much, to whom, and when they wish to disclose. Self-disclosure can also be a goal-oriented behavior; it can be used for different purposes in different situations. There is risk attached to self-disclosure. For all of these reasons, perceptions of others are crucial to decisions about disclosure. The impressions and attributions we have formed regarding others affect the extent of our willingness to disclose to them and the circumstances under which we are willing to disclose. We may be more likely to disclose to people who appear warm, receptive, and trustworthy. We may also disclose more to those who appear to have advantages to offer us in return for our disclosures. For example, someone is likely to self-disclose more readily to a prospective romantic partner who is both attractive and congenial than to one who appears to be either cold or personally unappealing.

Individuals manage their communication and disclosure with others to further their social goals. A major theoretical perspective related to this idea is that of self-presentation or impression management. This research assumes that people take on different roles in their daily lives, much like actors on a stage. Individuals select certain appearances or behaviors intended to convey a particular image for others.

One person may have a variety of roles or images he or she can portray, depending on the situation or the social goal of the moment. Some strategic methods of self-presentation that have been identified by researchers include emphasizing one's strengths or accomplishments, advertising one's moral superiority, portraying oneself as a helpless victim, ingratiating oneself through flattery and admiration, and appearing aggressive or intimidating. Individuals may rely on one particular self-presentation method in most of their interactions with others, or may vary their self-presentation based on the needs of the situation.

Different people are more or less motivated to change their self-presentation to suit the social requirements of different situations. Self-monitoring is a term used to describe the awareness of changes in social situations and the desire to alter one's self-presentation in order to better fit into those situations. People who are high self-monitors have many different images they are able and willing to present; people who are low self-monitors are more consistent in their self-presentation across many different situations. People also vary in how anxious they are in social situations; this can affect how well they manage their self-presentation. Extroverted people are generally more at ease with self-presentation strategies than are introverts; however, this appears to be mainly due to some introverts' anxiety over social interactions rather than a lack of skill in impression management.

The growing use of technology as a communication medium creates new questions about person perception and self-disclosure. In the past decade, much research has focused on the increasing use of the Internet as a medium for interpersonal communication. Because these types of communications tend to be relatively brief and made at a distance, communication partners often do not have the benefit of nonverbal or emotional expression in order to reduce uncertainty or help form judgments about the other. Early studies seemed to confirm that communicating through media such as e-mail, chat rooms, or cell phone text messages had the expected negative effect on communication effectiveness and social intimacy.

However, newer research findings are more equivocal. Some research indicates that communication via Internet increases openness in self-disclosure, promotes positive feelings about communication partners, and allows frequent interaction with friends and family. It is possible that as these technologies have become more established and accepted as useful communication tools, people have adapted their patterns of communications and social judgments as well. One hypothesis is that people who suffer from anxiety in face-to-face social encounters may be more at ease communicating by computer and thus able to have more satisfying social interactions. Social scientists have only begun to explore the effects of technology on interpersonal perceptions and communication. It is not clear as yet what the full impact of newer technologies will be on patterns of interpersonal communication.

How much one communicates to others about oneself is a complex social decision. This self-disclosure may serve several purposes: social penetration, social manipulation, or emotional catharsis. People often build accounts about themselves to use specifically in telling their stories to others. They may also strategically balance how much they reveal in order to maximize social benefits through self-presentation while minimizing the inherent risks in disclosing personal information. To do this well, people must make judgments about the receptivity, trustworthiness, or helpfulness of others. Thus, disclosure decisions are linked to the process of interpersonal perception.

Publisher Summary

This chapter discusses the use of self disclosure in television health education. The issues covered in this television health education program were problems of adjusting to long-term sexual relationships, sexual implications of contraception, pregnancy and fertility, adolescent sexuality― both from the adolescents' and the parents' point of view—sexuality in later life, ordinary problems in gay relationships, and some common sexual problems in heterosexual relationships. In dealing with gay issues, the primary objective of a six-program series on sex education was to be of help to gay viewers, but there was a clear secondary objective, that is, to increase understanding of homosexuality amongst nonhomosexuals. Most subjects were contacted through health professionals, voluntary agencies, community groups, local press, and radio announcements. They were usually interviewed in their own homes so as to make them more relaxed and to give additional information about their lifestyles. The style of the program that emerged depended on careful editing of the recorded material without linking commentary and with minimal involvement of the interviewers. The order and juxtaposition of extracts was used to impose the theme or series of themes to each program.

Gremlin Number Five: Self-Disclosure

If this book had been written 10 years ago, a discussion of self-disclosure would have been relatively straightforward. There is a professional principle involved; it is the ethical requirements of every professional group to distinguish between a practitioner’s professional and private lives (see American Counseling Association, 2005; American Psychiatric Association, 2001; American Psychological Association, 2002; National Association of Social Workers, 2008). All these professional groups identify which behaviors on the part of the practitioner conform or violate their ethical standards. They also specifically state that these ethical requirements do not apply to one’s private life. Pipes, Holstein, and Aguirre (2005) state this distinction clearly (and colorfully) when comparing a practitioner’s private life as compared with her or his professional one.

Outside their roles as psychologists, they may … break confidences, be verbally abusive to their romantic partners, lie to their friends, evaluate others unfairly, and generally act like a louse. (p. 326)

The question of self-disclosure was never a problem in the old rigid days of Freudian psychoanalysis. The neat inviolate rule was never to disclose anything about the therapist, or to answer any question posed by the patient. The theory behind it was that the analyst was supposed to represent a “blank screen” upon which the analysand could project his or her transference. Of course, no one is ever a blank screen, although it took orthodox psychoanalysis half a century to figure that out.

There have been two new dimensions to self-disclosure that have changed the discussion immeasurably: the first are the changes in therapeutic theory, and the second is the powerful influence of the Internet on clinical practice. Modern schools of psychotherapy (like the ones represented in this book) are more relaxed and allow the personality of the therapist to be present in the counseling room. That advance in technique is a two-sided coin that has advantages and disadvantages for the progress of psychological treatment. It has the advantage of aiding in the development of empathy and therapeutic rapport between the therapist and the patient. But the potential disadvantages are awesome. It was easy to know how to behave as a Freudian analyst—just say “No.” Because we have opened the door to personal questions from our clients, might we also be opening a Pandora’s box, unleashing an entangled web of transference and counter-transference? What questions do we answer, and when do we retreat to the safety of therapeutic boundaries? A story from my past illustrates this dilemma.

I was trained as a clinical psychologist in the psychology department of the City College of New York. In the second year of the program we worked part-time at the college counseling center. I was assigned to do an initial interview with an undergraduate student. He was to be the first client of my career. I arrived at the center with a fresh pad of paper and an outline for conducting the interview. I introduced myself to the student and we walked into the counseling room and sat down. Then before I could say anything, he said, “I want to know how you feel about the Vietnam War.” I was dumbfounded. This was not supposed to happen! I was supposed to be in charge! While I sat in turmoil, he said, “I’ll only work with you if you agree with me that the war is immoral and should end.” For those too young to remember, the Vietnam War was extremely divisive in America, and the war in Southeast Asia was matched by demonstrations on our streets, many arrests, and in a few cases students were shot and killed.

Like other students, I was also against the war, and I had demonstrated on the streets challenging our government to put an end to it. But that was not the point. Did I, a neophyte (tadpole?) therapist have the right to introduce my values into this young man’s therapy—and at his demand, to boot? Flying by the seat of my pants, I made my decision based upon how important shared values were to this young man. I said that I was against the war. He responded by thanking me for my answer and began to tell me why he wanted to enter psychotherapy.

Immediately after the session, I ran to my supervisor in order to confess my sin and to ask for absolution. My supervisor was the best on the faculty; he was almost a legend at City College, and I respected his judgment enormously. “He has a right to know about your values,” said Dr. Hertzman. He discussed this issue in my supervision class the next day and argued that shared values aid in forming a therapeutic alliance. In the 45 years that have transpired since that day, I have learned that my supervisor was right. Shared values between counselor and counselee represent a fertile foundation for a successful treatment. On the other hand, I have also learned that expressing them carries significant risks. Which values should we share, how often, and when do we stop? This problem of shared values and other personal questions does not come up often during an initial interview, but as I’ve stated earlier, it is only a matter of time before the neophyte counselor will be handling both short- and long-term clients.

As already mentioned, the patient is entitled to an explanation of the process that she or he is undertaking. In a clinic setting there may be a written procedure; in private practice the therapist usually makes a statement about what she or he is doing and why. Personal questions about the interviewer, on the other hand, are best left unanswered because one cannot in so short a period of time understand what meta-message it will convey to your client.

The only exception I make is to answer a question about my sexual orientation—but only if I am asked. Self-disclosure of one’s sexual orientation has often been discussed in the professional literature because it is of importance to LGBT people (Gartrell, 1994; Herek & Greene, 1994; Kooden, 1991; Perlman, 1991). Gay and lesbian therapists have argued the advantages and disadvantages of “coming out” to their clients, and the general consensus is that they should when asked. It is easy to do this in large metropolitan cities, but harder to do so if working in rural clinics, especially those that are religiously funded. Lawyers have a good saying for the problem. It is, “The camel’s nose is in the tent,” meaning that once you answer (in this case) one question, you may not be able to curtail other client questions that may become more intrusive. Always remember to think in terms of meta-communications; what is the underlying meaning of the question?

While I will divulge my sexual orientation, my client is not entitled to know whether I have a lover, when I came out, where I live, or anything else about my life. One humorous example in my practice was the patient who frequently wanted to put food in my refrigerator during his session, so that he could look over my apartment and learn what kinds of foods I eat (and whether I kept a neat kitchen). In this day of the Internet, a client may do a search in order to inquire about me, and many of my patients have done so. That is their prerogative. I will not feed the underlying fantasy that motivates the questions, and I do not have enough time to find out about it during an initial interview. The patient who persists in asking personal questions may have serious problems with ego boundaries and that should be noted in a written report. Answering personal questions during the initial interview delivers a meta-message that the future therapist will meet the patient’s dependency or control needs. The assigned therapist will not thank you for making her or his work more difficult. These questions relating to the line between one’s professional functions versus private life are relatively easy to identify.

Of all the contributors to this book, Nichols (Chapter 4) is the most revealing to her clients about her life, background, and her goals for psychotherapy. Her point of view is passionate and far from the traditional boundaries of psychotherapy. While some colleagues may hail her as courageous, others may feel as if she has strayed too far from traditional boundaries. I admire her ability to self-disclose but to never cross ethical boundaries.

The Internet, however, has changed everything about professional versus private life in clinical practice. Unfortunately professional schools and ethics boards have not yet caught up with the explosion of technology and its implications for practice. This may be due to the fact that students and young practitioners are better versed in these techniques than their instructors. A simple Internet search will reveal many aspects of our lives. Many of us now have professional web pages in which a potential applicant may learn about our education and background, and we construct this source of information in order to advertise our expertise in ways congruent with the ethical guidelines of our discipline. But the same Internet search may also turn up considerably more personal information than we would voluntarily give to a patient.

There is a generation gap here. Prensky (2001) has described “Digital Natives” as a younger generation that has been born to the Internet and views its communication like a second language, while “Digital Immigrants” are considerably older and have (at best) an ambivalent attitude toward modern technology. At least 85 percent of college students own their own computer, some of them having begun to use them between the ages of 5 and 8, and they check their email every day (Lehavot, 2009). Twenty percent of psychology graduate students have Internet profiles, and many of them post photos and information that they would not want their clients to see (Lehavot, Barnett, & Powers, 2010). Almost all of these graduate psychology students were conducting psychotherapy under supervision at their respective schools. A high percentage of them also have profiles on MySpace, Facebook, and other social networking sites, and these are available to other members of the social network community.

But many established psychotherapists are also members of social networking sites, and they too post photographs and personal information for others to see, including current or potential clients. Since this form of technological communication is so new, we do not yet know its implications for professional practice. For instance, should a therapist remove a photograph of himself or herself at the beach wearing a skimpy bathing suit and hoisting a bottle of beer? Should a therapist do a computer search for information about a client in therapy, and is it helpful to the client’s therapy if we find a photograph of her or him in a skimpy bathing suit and hoisting a bottle of beer? The normally identified boundary between personal and professional becomes highly permeable under these circumstances.

It has gotten even more controversial with the development of sexually oriented websites on the Internet. We can pose the question this way: Is it a violation of ethical standards for a therapist (male, female, gay, or straight) to join a website whose purpose is to meet another person for a sexual liaison and publish a profile graphically discussing preferred sexual activities, together with nude photographs including their genitals? And is it a violation of ethics for the therapist, knowing that a patient has such a website, to access it and look at his or her physically revealing photos together with other sexual and nonsexual information? Might it be okay for the therapist to do so, if she or he asks for permission? And if that is okay, exactly how would the therapist ask?

These are not theoretical problems because they have already appeared on professional list servers. Some therapists have argued that a therapist has the right to a private life, including membership in sex websites. Others, and here I will count myself among them, argue that once the information and photographs are placed on a public website for all members to see, it is no longer private.

Pipes and associates (2005) state the case well when discussing the issue of ethics for members of the APA.

Professional associations such as the American Psychological Association (APA) have a vested interest in the behaviors of their members for a number of reasons, including the reputation of the profession, the desire to enhance the education and competency of members, and the aspiration to protect the students, clients, supervisees, organizations, and research participants with whom members work. When individuals enter a profession, a question arises as to what behaviors, if any, they agree to modify or give up as a result of becoming a member of the profession. (p. 325)

They go on to say that by joining the APA, members voluntarily agree to constrain their behavior. They were only discussing social networking sites, not sexual web pages. Within the next few years, all professional organizations and training institutions will be required to come to terms with the ethics of their members participating in sexually oriented websites. Simple participation in social networking sites has already created problems in psychotherapy, even when they conform to ethical standards. Patients viewing naked pictures of their therapists or therapists calling up naked pictures of their patients will unquestionably destroy a therapeutic relationship and could possibly lead to charges of unethical conduct against the therapist by state licensing boards and litigation against the therapist. Advertising for romance, in contrast to sex, while less inflammatory, may create as much havoc in psychotherapy as sexually revealing photographs.

Sophisticated users of these web pages say that privacy controls are available to limit those who see the information posted. While that may be true of sites such as Facebook and MySpace (or may not), it makes no sense to use privacy controls when one is advertising for romance or sex. If you are training to serve the public as a therapist of whatever school of psychotherapy, you will have to give up some of the freedoms that are available to ordinary “civilians.” That includes advertising for romance and sex on the Internet. You will have to find other ways to find likely partners.

EMPIRICAL FINDINGS

Before proceeding with our first experimental investigation of interviewer ambiguity, we (Siegman and Pope [76]) developed a scale with which to assess the ambiguity-specificity levels of the interviewer's remarks. Using this scale we constructed an interview schedule composed of an equal number of relatively ambiguous and relatively specific interviewer questions (Table 19.1). The order of these questions was only partially controlled, with the interviewer always opening the interview with two ambiguous questions, proceeding with four specific questions, and concluding with two specific ones. As can be seen in Table 19.1, the same procedure was followed by the interviewer in two topical areas: family relations and school experiences. The interviewees, fifty female students in a university-affiliated school of nursing, were preselected so that questions focusing on their family relations would be more anxiety-arousing than questions focusing on their school experiences. A postinterview questionnaire revealed that this objective was in fact achieved, although even the family relations topic produced only mild anxiety arousal. Finally, all interviewees were administered the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale (MAS), a measure of predispositional or trait anxiety.

Table 19.1. EXPERIMENTAL INTERVIEW

Interviewees’ productivity scores (number of words per response) were clearly affected by the ambiguity-specificity manipulation, with interviewees giving longer responses to the ambiguous than to the specific interviewer queries (the means being 47.86 and 16.16, respectively). The magnitude of the correlation between the two variables (interviewer ambiguity and interviewee productivity) was.92.

There was no statistically significant interaction between the ambiguity manipulation and topical focus, nor between the ambiguity manipulation and interviewees’ anxiety level as measured by the Taylor MAS, both of which should have occurred if anxiety arousal was indeed the mediating variable in the relation between interviewer ambiguity and interviewee productivity [53,78]. Yet another reason for rejecting anxiety arousal as the mediating variable is the finding that the ambiguity manipulation had no significant effect on the level of speech disruption in interviewees’ responses, as measured by Mahl's [36] Speech Disturbance Ratio (SDR). Experimentally manipulated anxiety-arousal is consistently associated with an increase in speech disruptions, as measured by Mahl's index. The fact that the ambiguity manipulation in this study had no significant influence on interviewees’ SDRs makes it highly unlikely that anxiety arousal served as a mediating variable.

Siegman and Pope [78] have since taken a cognitively oriented approach to the relation between interviewer ambiguity and interviewee productivity. By definition, an ambiguous interviewer remark presents the interviewee with a number of response alternatives. The interviewee has to decide with which alternative to begin, and then which of the alternatives to include and which to exclude. Clearly, this involves some decision making on his part. It is, of course, true that by their very nature some ambiguous interviewer remarks call for longer interviewee responses than specific ones. It is suggested, however, that more is involved in the relation between ambiguous interviewer messages and interviewee productivity level. This is indicated by the finding that the interviewees’ responses to the ambiguous interviewer remarks are associated with more hesitantly articulated speech than their responses to the specific interviewer remarks. Hesitation took the form of a slower speech rate and a higher ratio of filled pauses, that is, ahs and similar expressions [78]. In another study interviewer ambiguity level significantly affected interviewees’ response latencies and the duration of their silent pauses, with the highly ambiguous interviewer remarks, in contrast to the specific ones, being associated with longer latencies and within-response silent pauses. These indices (long latencies, silent pauses, ahs, and a slow speech rate), are all correlates of cognitive activity and indicate that information processing is taking place at the time of the hesitation [15,71]. These findings, then, are consistent with the hypothesis that uncertainty is a critical mediating variable between interviewer ambiguity level and interviewee productivity level.

The second study in the series on interviewer message ambiguity and its effects on interviewees’ responses focused on the following questions: (1) How important is it, from the point of view of interviewee productivity, that the interviewer begin his questioning with relatively ambiguous remarks and gradually proceed to more specific ones, rather than proceeding in the reverse order? To phrase this question in statistical terms: Are there significant order effects? (2) What, if any, are the effects of the interviewer-interviewee relationship on the positive correlation between interviewer ambiguity level and interviewee productivity? Is this correlation increased if the interviewer withholds social reinforcement feedback to the interviewee, so that the latter is even more uncertain about the adequacy of his responses? (3) What is the relation between interviewer message ambiguity and interviewee self-disclosure?

In this study [55,56], thirty-two female interviewees participated in a sequence of two interviews, each conducted by a different female interviewer. In one of the interviews, the interviewer adopted a warm and friendly manner; in the other she adopted a decidedly neutral and reserved manner, which could be best characterized by an absence of social reinforcement feedback, such as smiling. For one-half of the interviewees, the interviewers followed an ambiguous-specific sequence; they started by asking two relatively ambiguous questions which were followed by two relatively specific ones. For the rest of the subjects the interviewers followed the reverse sequence, starting with the specific probes which were followed by the more ambiguous ones.

As in the previous study, interviewer ambiguity-specificity level had a highly significant effect on interviewees’ productivity, with interviewees being more productive in response to ambiguous than to specific interviewer probes. This effect was independent of the interviewer warmth-reserve manipulation. However, the effect was significantly influenced by the order or sequence manipulation. The ambiguous interviewer questions were associated with significantly more productive interviewee responses than the specific interviewer probes irrespective of order or sequence, but the effect was greater in the ambiguous-specific sequence than in the specific-ambiguous sequence. The very same findings were obtained by Heselton [25], who investigated the effects of interviewer message ambiguity in a group of youngsters ranging in age from six to twelve. The results of that particular study strongly suggest that what happens at the beginning of an interview provides a set for the rest of the interview, at least as far as productivity is concerned. To begin the interview with a question that produces a relatively long response is likely to enhance the interviewee's productivity level throughout the interview. Evidence for such a “primacy” effect is also suggested by several other studies in which adult interviewees served as subjects.

While productivity is a variable which can be readily quantified and measured, the same cannot be said of self-disclosure, and hence the variety of ways in which it has been measured by different investigators. In this study self-disclosure was measured in the following manner. Each clause* within an interviewee's response was rated as either superficial or meaningful. Clauses that are factually descriptive or trivial, rather than evaluational or psychologically analytic or referring to affective experiences, are scored as superficial. A Superficiality Ratio is then obtained by dividing the number of superficial clauses in an interviewee's response by the total number of clauses. This index, then, is an inverse measure of self-disclosure, with a low score on this index indicating a high level of self-disclosure. Data on the reliability and validity of this index are presented elsewhere [78]. Interviewees’ responses to the ambiguous interviewer probes were associated with a higher Superficiality Index, that is, with less self-disclosure, than their responses to the specific interviewer probes. This difference occurred in both topics (school experiences and family relations) but the difference was most pronounced in relation to the questions dealing with family relations. This interaction reflects the fact that the interviewer's specific questions in the family relations area elicited a very high level of self-disclosure, much more so than the interviewer's ambiguous questions in the same topical area. In fact, interviewee's self-disclosure level in response to the ambiguous questions in the family relations area was not significantly higher than their self-disclosure level to the ambiguous questions in the school experiences areas — which is inherently a more superficial topical area. One explanation for this finding is that ambiguous interviewer remarks, in contrast to specific ones, provide the interviewee with a greater latitude for avoiding and circumventing potentially embarrassing or anxiety-arousing information. There is less opportunity for marking time with superficial information when an interviewer “zeroes in” with a highly specific question in a sensitive area. This is analogous to the previous finding that ambiguous TAT cards tend to elicit fewer anxiety, and depression-related themes that TAT cards which are low in ambiguity.

A study by Pope and his associates [48] tried to validate the above findings, which were obtained in highly controlled interviews, within the context of a relatively more naturalistic setting. In this study, twenty-four psychiatric inpatients were each interviewed three times. Unlike as in the previous studies, the interviewer was not limited to questions from a prepared script. The only restriction placed upon him was that he limit his remarks to ambiguous questions in one interview and to specific remarks in another. He was free to mix his remarks in a third interview. Interviewees alternated between the various orders of the three types of interviews. The results of this study clearly confirmed the previous findings concerning the effects of interviewer message ambiguity on interviewee productivity and hesitation in speech. On the other hand, in this seminaturalistic interview study with a patient population, the ambiguous interviews were associated with lower Superficiality Ratios, that is, with more self-disclosure, than the other two types of interviews, which represents a clear-cut reversal of previous findings. Perhaps the discrepancy is related to the fact that in the seminaturalistic study the interviewers’ questions focused on the patients’ activities in the hospital — recreational and otherwise — a relatively neutral topic. It will be recalled that the inverse relationship between interviewer ambiguity and interviewee self-disclosure was attributed to the fact that ambiguous interviewer questions provide the interviewee with greater latitude to avoid discussing potentially embarrassing or anxiety-arousing material. There is no reason, then, to expect such an inverse relationship if the topic under discussion is a neutral one. On the other hand, this does not provide a rationale for obtaining a positive correlation between interviewer ambiguity and interviewee self-disclosure.

Although the positive correlation between interviewer ambiguity and interviewee productivity has been replicated in various subject populations, including a group of lower-class psychiatric outpatients and a group of schizophrenic patients [26], we need to test the limits of this relationship. In the studies discussed thus far even the highly ambiguous remarks were only relatively so, as compared to the specific interviewer probes. The most ambiguous interviewer question in these studies was: “Tell me something, anything that occurs to you about your family.” Furthermore, the specific probes were selected from the very bottom of the scale, and were indeed highly specific. What would be the consequence, as far as interviewee productivity is concerned, of comparing even more highly ambiguous interviewer remarks, such as “Tell me anything that occurs to you,” with interviewer probes of moderate ambiguity level? Would the more ambiguous questions still be associated with higher levels of interviewee productivity, or is there an optimum level of message ambiguity beyond which further ambiguity is likely to produce a decrease in interviewee's productivity level. Some support for the latter of the two options is provided by the results of a study conducted by Heller and his associates [22]. Interviewees, in a student group and in a patient group, were simply asked to talk about themselves, whereas others responded to moderately ambiguous questions that focused on a more circumscribed topic, such as family and work. The students were apparently more productive in the moderately structured than in the highly unstructured interviews, although the precise reverse relationship obtained in the patient group. Clearly, there is a need for further study of this issue.

Heller and his associates also looked at the effects of interviewer ambiguity level, or structure as they refer to this variable, on interviewee self-disclosure. The latter was assessed by means of two indices: number of self-references per 15 second intervals of speech, and number of problem statements per 15 second intervals of speech. By and large the moderately structured interviews were associated with higher levels of self-disclosure, when the latter was defined in terms of self-references. The relationship between interviewer ambiguity and interviewee self-disclosure was much more complex, and differed for the two subject groups, when problem admission was used as an index of self-disclosure. Furthermore, interviewer warmth seemed to serve as a moderator variable* in the student group.

By way of summary, then, it is suggested that as far as the relationship between interviewer message ambiguity and interviewee productivity is concerned the research evidence is fairly consistent: within certain limits message ambiguity enhances interviewee productivity, and this is true across subject populations. Furthermore, this relationship is apparently fairly robust and is not readily attenuated by other variables. The relationship between interviewer message ambiguity and interviewee self-disclosure, on the other hand, is apparently influenced by a number of other variables, including topical focus and the nature of the relationship between the interviewer and the interviewee, and different results are obtained with university students than with patient populations.