Chapter 12
The Humanistic Approach:
Relevant Research
Self-Disclosure
Self-disclosure and Sidney Jourard’s
(1971) concept of The Transparent Self
 Jourard argued that being “transparent” to others
is a good thing.
 He believed that open and full self-disclosure
enables us to understand ourselves better, to be
more self-accepting, and to become more selfactualized.
 He believed that the causal arrow between selfdisclosure and well-being runs both ways.
 His ideas were very much in the idealistic
tradition of the humanistic psychology
movement of the 1970s, but his emphasis on
being completely “transparent” to others seems
somewhat naïve today.
Disclosure reciprocity
 The “strangers on the train” phenomenon exploits
society’s most important implicit rule about selfdisclosure.
 This rule calls for reciprocity in the amount and
intimacy of self-disclosure between strangers and
acquaintances.
 Jourard referred to this reciprocity or “matching” of
self-disclosure as the dyadic effect.
 Evidence for the dyadic effect has been found in
laboratory studies such as the one by Davis (1976).
Progression of intimacy during initial dyadic
conversations (Davis, 1976)
5.5
5
4.5
4
3.5
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
Disclosure reciprocity
 When we reciprocate disclosure intimacy with another
person, feelings of mutual attraction, trust, and liking
typically develop.
 These feelings can rapidly change to ones of anger and
dislike, however, if the other person betrays our
confidences.
 The dyadic effect can be so powerful that we find
ourselves disclosing more than we should (or than we
want to) to someone who has just disclosed to us (the
“strangers on the train” effect).
Self-disclosure among friends and romantic
partners
 In general, friends and romantic partners disclose more to each other
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than strangers and acquaintances do.
However, strangers and acquaintances are more likely to follow the
reciprocity norm for disclosure than friends and romantic partners do.
Studies of recorded phone conversations reveal several differences
between the conversations of intimates and those of non-intimates (use
of familiar terms, laughing at similar points, coordinating speech, etc.)
In married couples, the amount of self-disclosure is a strong predictor
of reported marital satisfaction.
However, it is not the case that people who disclose a lot (and
indiscriminately) have more success at romance. Instead, such success
is more likely when two people choose to intimately disclose only to
each other.
Disclosing men and disclosing women
 Researchers typically find that women disclose more intimately
and to more people than men do.
 In one study, a person who was described as being highly
disclosing about personal problems was rated more favorably
when the person was thought to be a woman rather than a man.
 Members of both genders are liked more and are seen as better
adjusted when they disclose within their respective societal
gender roles.
 These findings are consistent with the observation that
American men have learned to be friendly but to avoid intimacy.
Disclosing traumatic experiences
 James Pennebaker and his colleagues have
studied the health implications of disclosing
traumatic experiences.
 In their studies, people are randomly assigned to
disclose about something trivial or something
traumatic that they have experienced.
 Physiological measures are recorded before the
self-disclosure to establish personal baselines.
 The effect of the self-disclosure on the
physiological measures and on subsequent
measures of health status is then assessed.
Some findings from the study of disclosing
traumatic experiences
 The general finding is that keeping traumatic experiences bottled up
inside (repressed) may be hazardous to our heath.
 For example, Pennebaker and O’Heeron (1984) found that people
whose spouse had died unexpectedly reported fewer health problems
the more they had discussed this traumatic event with others.
 Pennebaker and Bell (1986) found that SMU students who disclosed
about traumatic (as opposed to trivial) experiences over four
consecutive nights reported more stress and more negative moods
immediately after the disclosures.
 However, these same students were less likely to visit the campus
health center during the next six months.
Mean number of visits to the health center as
a function of experimental condition
1.6
1.4
1.2
1
Trivial topics
0.8
Traumatic topics
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
Before study
After study
Some findings from the study of disclosing
traumatic experiences
 Pennebaker, Colder, and Sharp (1990) found similar results when they
asked SMU freshmen to write about the problems and emotions they
experienced after leaving home and trying to adjust to college life.
 Cameron and Nicholls (1998) extended these results to show that the
same kind of self-disclosure also resulted in higher first-semester
GPAs.
 Lepore (1997) found that college students were less emotionally upset
about taking the GRE after first expressing their concerns in writing.
 On the other hand, researchers have found that people who typically
conceal unpleasant information about themselves also experience more
distress and a lower sense of well-being (Kahn & Hessling, 2001;
Larsen & Chastain, 1990).
Why does disclosing traumatic experiences
have these effects?
 Actively inhibiting thoughts and feelings about traumatic experiences
requires a great deal of psychological and physiological work.
 The short- and long-term stress this creates takes its toll over time, in
the form of stress-related illness and compromised immune system
functioning.
 People who watched a disturbing 14-minute presentation about the
Holocaust and then had the opportunity to talk about their feelings and
reactions for two minutes were less likely than control participants to
have intrusive thoughts about it later (Lepore, Regan, & Jones, 2000).
 Talking or writing about traumatic events may be an important step in
working through the trauma, and this may be an important reason why
psychotherapy works for many, if not all, clients.
Loneliness
Loneliness
 Loneliness is a common experience.
 75% of freshmen students at a large university reported
being lonely at the start of the school year.
 More than 40% of these students described their feelings
of loneliness as being moderate to severe.
 Loneliness for some people might relate to their existential
anxiety and their need for meaning in their lives.
 For most people, however, loneliness reflects the
perception that some of their most important needs (social
needs, esteem needs, etc.) aren’t being met.
Loneliness
 Loneliness is not the same as isolation. It is not the number of social
contacts we have that determines our feelings of loneliness. Instead, it is
our perception that our social contacts are less satisfying and less able to
fulfill our needs than we desire.
 Younger people tend to need more social contacts than older people to
avoid feeling lonely.
 Feelings of loneliness also vary by culture, and are less common in
collectivist cultures, such as those of China and Japan, than in individualist
cultures such as those of the United States or Western Europe.
 Although there are life situations (moving to a new location, taking a new
job) in which most people feel lonely, some people appear to be
dispositionally lonely in that their feelings of loneliness are relatively
stable over time.
Pathways between loneliness and health
Health behaviors
Lonely people have poorer health habits
Stress exposure
Lonely people experience more chronic stressors
Coping styles
Lonely people use less effective coping strategies
when dealing with stress
Stress physiology
Lonely people experience unhealthy changes in
physiology
Recuperation
Lonely people are less able to rely on natural
restorative processes that improve health
The causes (or effects?) of loneliness
 There is a cluster of personality traits that are characteristic of
dispositionally lonely individuals: high scores on depression, social
anxiety, self-consciousness, and sensitivity to rejection, and low scores on
extraversion, self-esteem, assertiveness, and interpersonal trust.
 There are characteristic negative expectations that lonely people bring to
social situations:
– In Christensen and Kashy’s (1998) study of discussions in groups of four
strangers, dispositionally lonely people rated themselves less favorably than
their discussion partners and expected that the other members of the group
would also rate them poorly.
– In fact, however, the lonely students were not evaluated less favorably by other
group members and were actually perceived as being friendlier than average.
– Their negative expectations may lead lonely people to selectively remember
negative feedback, and to interpret ambiguous feedback as signs of rejection.
The causes of loneliness
 There are also certain impaired social skills that are characteristic of
lonely individuals. These specific social skill impairments often
include:
– Finding it difficult to initiate conversations with others
– Expressing relatively little interest in their interaction partners (e.g.,
asking fewer questions and making fewer references to what the partner
said)
– Talking too much about themselves and introducing new topics unrelated
to their partner’s interest
– Adopting a “passive interpersonal role”
– Selecting relatively non-intimate topics that can keep the interaction from
progressing toward a greater level of mutual intimacy
Self-Esteem
Self-esteem
 Whereas the term self-concept refers to your overall
conception of yourself, the term self-esteem refers to your
overall evaluation of yourself.
 Self-esteem should also be distinguished from more
temporary and situation-specific feelings of self-worth.
 It is also important to distinguish between global and
domain-specific self-esteem.
 People differ in the importance they place on different
domains of self-esteem.
Self-esteem and reactions to failure
 In several laboratory studies, people were given false feedback about
their performance on a task. Following an induced failure experience,
low self-esteem people were more likely than high self-esteem people
to give up on a second task when they thought they had performed
poorly on the first task.
 In studies of students’ reactions to their exam grades, students who had
similar low scores on their first exam but who differed in their level of
self-esteem, displayed similar reactions to those identified in the
laboratory studies. The performance of the low self-esteem students
declined significantly more than that of the high self-esteem students
on their second exam.
Solvable versus unsolvable anagrams
Solvable anagrams
Unsolvable anagrams
IUFTR
ANBIT
OEWRP
DATGI
DNSOU
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Self-esteem and reactions to failure
 In several laboratory studies, people were given false feedback about
their performance on a task. Following an induced failure experience,
low self-esteem people are more likely than high self-esteem people to
give up on a second task when they think they have failed the first
task.
 In studies of students’ reactions to their exam grades, students who had
similar low scores on their first exam but who differed in their level of
self-esteem, displayed similar reactions to those identified in the
laboratory studies. The performance of the low self-esteem students
declined significantly more than that of the high self-esteem students
on their second exam.
Performance on second test as a function of
self-esteem and performance on first test
90
85
80
75
70
High self-esteem
65
Low self-esteem
60
55
50
45
Did well on first test
Did poorly on first test
Explaining these different reactions to failure
 One possible explanation is that people are more likely to accept
feedback that is consistent with their self-concepts.
 A second possible explanation is that negative feedback reminds
low self-esteem people of the low evaluation they have of
themselves.
 A third possible explanation is that failure feedback leads high
self-esteem people to shift their attention to dimensions on
which they value themselves highly (see, for example, the
results of the study by Brown & Smart, 1991).
Ratings of one’s social attributes following an
apparent failure experience (Brown & Smart, 1991)
6.5
6
Success
5.5
Failure
5
4.5
High self-esteem
Low self-esteem
Self-enhancement and self-protection motives
 Research findings reveal that high self-esteem people are
motivated by a concern for self-enhancement, whereas low selfesteem people are motivated by a concern for self-protection.
 For example, in a study in which people were led to believe they
would compare favorably with other people on some tasks but
not on other tasks, the low self-esteem people wanted to learn
how they did only on the “safe” tasks.
 In another study, the confidence of high self-esteem students
stayed high up to exam day, whereas the confidence of low selfesteem students declined, as did their mood.
 In other studies, low self-esteem people have been shown to use
self-handicapping as a strategy for protecting their self-esteem.
Self-esteem stability
 Self-esteem stability is assessed by having people complete the same
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self-esteem measure at several points in time and then computing how
much these self-esteem scores vary in relation to their average score.
Researchers find that people with low self-esteem stability (high
variability) are very concerned with outside evaluations.
They are also more likely to make decisions with the goal of pleasing
others, rather than pleasing themselves.
A single instance of positive feedback can make them feel
exceptionally good about themselves, but a single instance of negative
feedback can make them feel exceptionally bad.
Because they are more vulnerable to the effects of negative feedback,
they are more vulnerable to depression, as evidenced by Kernis’s
(1998) study of reactions to daily hassles.
Reported depression as a function of self-esteem stability
and the number of daily hassles experienced (Kernis, 1998)
10
9
8
Few hassles
7
Many hassles
6
5
4
Stable self-esteem
Unstable self-esteem
Self-esteem and culture
 In individualistic cultures, such as the those of the US, Canada, and
Australia, self-esteem is based primarily on individual accomplishment. In
contrast, in collectivist cultures, such as India and China, self-esteem is
based primarily on belongingness and cooperation with others.
 Concepts like self-esteem and happiness have different meanings in
different cultures (being able to pursue your own goals in your own way
versus fulfilling your role in society and meeting other people’s
expectations).
 The “Lake Wobegon effect” is commonly found in studies conducted in
the US, but is much less evident when the same studies are conducted in
collectivist cultures.
 In one study, the self-esteem scores of Asians was found to increase with
their average amount of exposure to Western culture.
Average self-esteem scores of Asian and AsianCanadians as a function of exposure to Western culture
never been abroad
been abroad
recent immigrants
long-term immigrants
2nd generation
3rd generation
30
35
40
Solitude
Solitude has both negative and positive
aspects
 When viewed in terms of personality traits such as social
anxiety, shyness, and loneliness, solitude is generally regarded
as a negative experience.
 However, when viewed in terms of other personality traits such
as introversion and avoidant attachment, solitude may actually
be a positive, or at least neutral, experience.
 Maslow argued that self-actualized people were comfortable
being alone, and often reporting enjoying and valuing this
experience.
 His perspective may help us understand why people spend an
increasingly greater percentage of the day alone as they get
older (Larson, 1990).
Percentage of day spent alone as a function of
age (Larson, 1990)
50
40
30
20
10
0
Children High school
(ages 9-12)
students
Adults
Retired
adults
Negative and positive aspects of time alone
 Negative aspects:
– In general, people rate time by themselves as less pleasant than time
spent with others.
– Emotional difficulties often worsen when people are alone.
– People who are prone to depression may become depressed when alone.
– Bulemics have a particularly negative reaction to being alone.
 Positive aspects:
– More people report wanting more time by themselves (31%) than less
time by themselves (6%).
– Being alone can be restorative: short breaks, longer periods to
decompress and think through problems, and extended retreats from the
world
– Isolation is a key aspect of religious retreats and Buddhist re-integrative
therapy.
Individual differences in preference for
solitude
 People exhibit relatively stable preferences in the extent to
which they seek out and enjoy time by themselves.
 Research with high school students suggests that moderate
levels of solitude, rather than extremely low or high levels,
result in the best adjustment and overall mood.
 The findings of one study revealed that college students with a
high preference for solitude are not hermits. They spend much
of their free time with others and enjoy that time.
 However, they are more likely to make time to be alone and to
enjoy this time more than students with a low preference for
solitude.
Seven positive aspects of solitude
 Problem solving
 Inner peace
 Self-discovery
 Creativity
 Anonymity
 Intimacy
 Spirituality