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Open Access Thesis

Keywords

Intimacy (Psychology); Self-disclosure; Sex differences (Psychology); Sex role--Psychological aspects; Academic theses;

Abstract

Gender issues in the understanding and experience of intimacy have been in debate for the last 30 years. The gender and gender-role of the participant, the type of relationship studied, and the way in which intimacy has been defined have affected the conclusions drawn about gender differences in the understanding and expression of intimacy. The purpose of this study was to examine how these factors influenced perceptions of the amount and expression of self-reported intimacy in relationships. College students (N = 164) at a Midwestern university completed questionnaire packets including measures of self-disclosure and social intimacy for credit in their psychology courses. It was hypothesized that gender, gender-role, and the relationship type of the participants would affect scores on self-disclosure and social intimacy. It was also hypothesized that men would show a weaker relationship between self-disclosure and social intimacy than women would. The results indicated that women self-disclosed in cross-gender romantic relationships more than men, particularly for intimate self-disclosures, but women were not more socially intimate than men in their relationships. Androgynous and feminine participants reported higher social intimacy in their romantic relationships than masculine and undifferentiated participants. However, there were no significant differences in amount of self-disclosure by gender-role. Men self-disclosed more and were more socially intimate toward women in romantic relationships than toward women in friendships, but disclosures were more often about non-intimate topics than intimate topics. Women self-disclosed and were more socially intimate in romantic relationships than friendships in all domains. These findings suggest that gender was a determining factor in self-disclosure and gender-role was a determining factor of social intimacy levels. Gender strongly affects our expression of intimacy to others and male forms of intimate expression may be overlooked in research. This area of research has important implications for counselors who deal with relationship difficulties and intimacy issues daily regarding their clients. Counselors unaware of the research on intimacy may encourage women to expect self-disclosure from men in an intimate relationship and miss what men are doing to express intimacy in the relationship. More research on intimacy is needed to further clarify the potential factors contributing to intimacy in different relationships.

Year of Submission

2003

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Department of Psychology

First Advisor

Mary E. Losch

Second Advisor

Augustine Osman

Third Advisor

Helen Harton

Comments

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Date Original

2003

Object Description

1 PDF file (110 leaves)

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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