Getting to Know You: How Own Age and Other's Age Relate to Self-Disclosure

Abstract

In this study, we compared self-disclosures made in ten same-aged (young-young) and ten mixed-aged (young-old) conversational dyads. We developed a scoring scheme to code get-acquainted conversations on amount, type, valence, and intimacy of self-disclosure (S-Ds). Overall, young women produced more S-Ds with same-aged than with older partners. Young women devoted marginally fewer of their self-disclosures to statements about the past than did older women. Younger and older women's S-Ds about the present and the past were not significantly different in how negative, positive, or intimate they were. The intimacy and negativity of disclosures made by the dyad members were more closely correlated in young-young than in young-old dyads. Young participants' affective reports following the conversations did not differ as a function of partner age, but did correlate with aspects of their partners' self-disclosures. Findings offer a contrast to the stereotype that older adults dominate conversations with intimate, negative disclosures about the past.

Reminiscence and Vivid Personal Memories across Adulthood

“…Two scorers blind to the goals of the study independently coded 30 vivid memories, and agreed on 70% of the intimacy ratings, 93.3% of the negativity ratings, and 86.7% of the positivity ratings. (In a previous study, Collins and Gould (1994), this coding system yielded inter-rater agreement rates of intimacy 87%, negativity 90% and positivity, 91% of the time.) All stories were subsequently coded by both coders, and all disagreements were resolved through discussion.…”

“…Structurally, we measured the length of the productions in number of words and number of sentences, and the average number of words per sentences was also calculated. The presence of intimacy, negativity and positivity in the self-disclosures was also coded based on the scale developed by Collins and Gould (1994). Intimacy was scored on a 4 point scale and codes varied from 0 (no personal information is revealed), to 3 (an extreme level of intimacy likely to make a recipient uncomfortable is revealed).…”

Why are you telling me that? A conceptual model of the social function of autobiographical memory

“…Likewise, individuals are more inclined to disclose personal information (including information about their past) to someone who is similar to them. Young women share more information about themselves when interacting with another young woman than when interacting with a woman who is older (Collins & Gould, 1994). The limited amount of empirical work suggests that detail and emotion, qualitative memory characteristics that heighten the extent to which social functions are served, are more likely to be included when remembering for similar others.…”

Young Adults' Reactions to Grandparent Painful Self-Disclosure: The Influence of Grandparent Sex and Overall Motivations for Communication

“…In previous research, participants or those shown to painfully self-disclose have typically been women (e.g., Bonnesen & Hummert, 2002;Collins & Gould, 1994;, possibly because of the structural fact that there are large numbers of women in the older population (US Census Bureau, 2001b). Summarizing research in this area, Grainger, Atkinson, and Coupland (1990) observed that "elderly women have been found to be highly disclosive of intimate, personal and problematical information to younger first acquaintance, female interlocutors" (italics added, p. 193).…”