Blabbermouths and Clams: Sex Differences in Self-Disclosure in Same-Sex and Cross-Sex Friendship Dyads1

Helen M. Hacker Originally published 1981

Self-disclosure involves the two related dimensions of intimacy and power. It may be rewarding or costly to both confider and confidant. Although previous research has indicated that women are more self-disclosing than men, in the study reported here sex differences in self-disclosure are negligible in same-sex friendships. In cross-sex friendships, however, more men are confiding than women. Further, in female-male dyads men tend to hide their weaknesses and women to conceal their strengths. In such friendships, also, both men and women of working class origin are more prone to self-revelation than middle class respondents. Surprisingly, the correlation between feelings of closeness and self-disclosure is far from perfect in friendly (as opposed to stranger-like) relationships. Research on personal assessments of risks versus rewards in self-disclosure is needed.

Self-disclosure is a form of risk taking in which the potential rewards of sharing intimacy are weighed against the costs of vulnerability to rejection, ridicule, exploitation, or betrayal. Thus, confiding behavior places one in the power of the confidant. Among social equals this potentially unequal power situation is redressed or brought into balance by the norm of reciprocity (Derlega & Chaikin, 1975). We restore the equilibrium of power by returning the confidence. Many social relations, however, are seemingly structured on an imbalance of power, such as social worker-client, priest-confessor, and therapist-patient. As Henley (1973) has said, “Personal information flows opposite to the flow of authority.” This unidirectional flow of information can also represent a tyranny over the authority who is obliged to listen. On occasion the dominant person might like to reverse roles and share personal problems with the subordinate. Listening, as well as confiding, represents a reward to the vouchsafer of information. By listening one puts oneself at the disposal of the talker. Self-disclosure, then, involves the two related dimensions of intimacy and power, but power also has a two-sided character.

Previous research has indicated that women are more self-revealing than men (Cozby, 1973; Gitter & Black, 1976; Jourard & Lasakow, 1958; Lowenthal, Thurner, & Chiraboga & Assocs, 1975; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974; Powers & Bultena, 1976; Cantor 1976; Rosenkaimer, Saperstent, lshizaki & MacBride 1976; Stein 1976). According to Henley (1973), their greater amenability to personal divulgence is symbolic of their submission to men and functions to establish and maintain male dominance. This interpretation views self-disclosure solely as a reward to the listener, since the implicit trust is flattering and ego-inflating. The effect is more pronounced if the target person is led to feel that he has been especially singled out as the recipient of secrets and private thoughts, but the fact that women are generally expected to be more communicative may lessen the value of their confidences in comparison to those given by men. Further, as noted above, who holds the power in situations of one-sided communication cannot always be unequivocally determined.

Supplementing, but not contravening the differential power approach to self-disclosure, is that of gender role socialization that encourages girls to express, and boys to hide, feelings and private thoughts, especially those relating to personal problems, failures, and weaknesses. More leeway is given to boys in regard to talking about their strengths and successes.

In addition to consideration of power and socialization experiences which may or may not be conducive to encountering both the risks and the rewards of self-disclosure, we must also take heed of the factor of homogeneity. Here we call attention not to the content of gender role expectations, but to the fact of sex similarity itself with its implication of some commonality of experience, values, and interests. Many researchers have found that homogeneity plays an important part in friendship choices (Athanasiou & Yoshioka, 1973; Booth & Hess, 1974; Brenton, 1976; Hess 1977). Lazarsfeld and Merton (1954) coined the term “homophily” to refer to the influence of value similarity in promoting interpersonal attachments and fostering the closeness that, despite Simmel’s confessions-to-a-stranger phenomenon, is deemed prerequisite by many investigators for the feelings of trust that reduce the risks of self-disclosure. Indeed studies in this area have shown the degree of self-disclosure to vary directly with the level of friendship (Gitter & Black, 1976; Jourard, 1959; Nelson-Jones & Strong, 1976; Haapenen 1976). Presumably social norms require a close friend rather than an acquaintance as the appropriate recipient of confiding behavior (Luft, 1969). Jourard (1959) has put it: “The amount of personal information that one person is willing to disclose to another appears to be an index to the ‘closeness’ of the relationship, and of the affection, love or trust that prevails between two people.” According to Derlega and Chaikin (1977), “A major function of friendships and love relationships may be to validate one’s self-concept by obtaining the support and understanding of the other person.” A closeted self, of course, cannot be validated.

In summary, predictions concerning the degree and direction of self-disclosure in the three types of friendship dyads—female-female, male-male, and female-male—that constitute the focus of this paper should be based on the interaction among the four causal factors we have discussed:

1. the power relationship underlying the self-disclosure for both confider and confidant.

2. the perception of potential rewards by both discloser and disclosee.

3. the differential socialization of men and women in regard to the amount and content of what is appropriate for their sex to disclose.

4. the homogeneity or heterogeneity of sex status.

The Three Types of Friendship Dyads

Female-Female

On all four grounds we would expect self-disclosure to be highest in female-female friendships, and especially among married women in so far as marriage may be presumed to reduce their sexual rivalry with other women. First, despite the emergence of “old girl” networks, institutionalized power differentials among women are still only embryonic, and, consequently, the norm of reciprocity should hold sway. Second, they have been trained to value personal relationships and the rewards of intimacy, and to develop empathic skills. Third, the chumship relations of girlhood and adolescence may have provided the positive experiences that induce them to discount the costs of self-disclosure in favor of the benefits received. Fourth, homogeneity of lifestyle facilitates self-disclosure. To the extent that their roles as wives and mothers occupy the dominant portion of their life space, they share many problems. Even at the workplace their segregation in typing pools and women-dominated occupations, or alternatively, their common “token” status in masculine strongholds, may breed a community of interests. And in most instances the complications of the erotic potential are avoided.

Qualifying these considerations are the facts that women as a subordinate status group may not offer as many rewards to each other to serve to buttress self-esteem to the same degree that friendships with men do. Further, women are potential competitors for male favor, and in this regard run the risk of being subject to the leakage of information damaging to the self. Thus, married women might be expected to have closer and more durable friendships with each other, were it not for the possibilities that such friendships would intrude on the marital relationship or be less needed in view of the gratifications supplied by the husband. In fact, according to Booth and Hess (1974), “marriage for both men and women depresses confiding behavior in all of their friendship relations.”

Male-Male

Self-disclosure is expected to be lowest in this type of friendship. Socialization has inculcated the norm of disclosure of feelings as not only weak, but feminine, and therefore disvalued. Male socialization has also served to block men not only from seeking the rewards of intimacy, but perhaps also from even perceiving their needs in this area.

Since men represent the higher status group, and are in a position to mete out greater rewards and punishments than women, rejection from them is more to be feared. Furthermore, men may be perceived as more stringent upholders of masculine norms, and more resistant to changes in male roles than women are. As Lehne (1976) says, “The male role is predominantly maintained by men themselves.”

From the power standpoint there is no reason to suppose unequal patterns of self-disclosure among men, unless there is a disparity in their statuses other than sex. Additionally, the power to withhold confidences, as well as the power to withhold listening, may be viewed, purely in terms of sex status, as equal among men.

Counterbalancing the previous considerations of masculine norms and men’s vulnerability to other men is the fact of sex homogeneity. Men share a universe of discourse with other men, arising in part from a masculine culture of preoccupation with sports, politics, business, cars, sexual conquest, and so forth, and also from a similarity of roles as job-holders and primary breadwinners with attendant repercussions on their husband and father roles. What men hold in common may prove sufficient at least partially to overcome the obstacles posed by cultural proscriptions against undue self-disclosure and lack of skills in enjoying the rewards of intimacy.

Female-Male

In cross-sex friendships the vectors previously discussed are working in opposed directions and the force of each is unknown.

In such dyads the fact that the woman occupies a subordinate power position might imply greater self-disclosure on her part. The man, however, has less to fear from a woman than from another man, at least in a nonsexual relationship, and, consequently, can unburden himself with less constraint. In line with this supposition, middle-aged women ministers have reported considerable success in their pastoral work with men, who feel more comfortable in discussing their personal problems with a woman (Hacker 1950). Male undergraduates, also, have reported greater exchanges of confidences with best female friends than with best male friends (Komarovsky, 1974; Olstad, 1975).

Similarly, because of the continued primacy of the housewife role for women and the dual labor market for the two sexes, most women are not in direct competition with men for achievement of their principal life goals, but rather dependent on them. Further, if the possibility of a long-term romantic or marital interest is excluded, one might suppose that in terms of the power dimension alone women’s self-disclosure would be highest in a cross-sex relationship. Note, however, that this expectation assumes that the more powerful person in the dyad defines such disclosure as a reward rather than as a cost.

Whether a man wishes to take advantage of his dominant position in listening or in talking varies with factors not easily taken into account (Rubin, Hill, Peplau, and Dunkel-Schetter 1980).2 Marital status may constitute one such factor. Balswick and Peek (1971) speculate that men learn to be situationally rather than totally inexpressive and observe an emotional double standard that permits them communication with their wives but not with other women. This observation may be more applicable to white-collar than to blue-collar husbands (Komarovsky, 1967). In explaining their finding of the greater propensity of blue-collar than of white-collar wives to discuss personal difficulties with a male friend, Booth and Hess (1974) adduce both the lesser need and the more stringent marital restraints of white-collar women. If blue-collar wives indeed are able to obtain emotional support from men other than their husbands, it may be hypothesized that in such extramarital friendships they can play a more dominant role.

This type of relationship may be heterogeneous in aspects other than the sex of the participants. The hypergamy in our society extends also to friendship in that the man is likely to be older, better educated, hold a more prestigious job, and have more money than the woman (Booth & Hess, 1974). Such heterogeneity may block the avenue to closeness and consequent ease of self-disclosure provided by a commonality of interests and concerns.

In terms of gender role socialization, prediction is also problematic. True, women may be predisposed to self-disclosure, but they are also trained to please men. Consequently, the amount and kinds of self-disclosure that take place may depend on the needs and wishes of the man. If he wants her to speak, she is willing to comply. If he prefers to talk, she will be a receptive audience or sounding board. From all the foregoing, it may be hypothesized that he will listen only to her problems and failures, but that she will listen both to his problems and his triumphs.

It is with these presuppositions in mind that we approach our study of same-sex and cross-sex friendship dyads.

Sample and Method

Intensive interviews were conducted in the New York metropolitan area and in New Jersey during 1977-78 with both members of the following friendship pairs: 44 female-female dyads, 26 male-male dyads, and 55 cross-sex dyads. Since the interviewers were college students, the sample is disproportionately young, single, Catholic, educated, and white-collar. This paper is based on responses to questions tapping the areas of self-disclosure and closeness.

Self-Disclosure

1. What do you talk about?
2. What don’t you talk about?
3. Do you discuss your feelings about the friend to the friend?
4. Do you ever lie or intentionally withhold information from the friend?
5. How much do you trust your friend not to take advantage of your confidences?
6. Do you feel comfortable in revealing both weaknesses and strengths?

Responses to these questions were coded according to whether they indicated high, low, or moderate self-disclosure. Four of the six questions had to be categorized as either high or low for the individual to be placed at the extremes of the scale. Anything in between was considered moderate.

Closeness or Depth of the Relationship

1. How dependent are you on this friendship?
2. How would you feel if the friendship ended?
3. What circumstances might break it up?
4. How would you describe your feelings for this friend?

The responses to these questions were coded on a scale from “not close” to “very close.” Three of the four codes for each respondent had to indicate either a high level or a low level of closeness for the individual to be placed in the appropriate category. Anything in between was considered a moderate level of closeness. To test the relationship between closeness and self-disclosure a matrix was constructed employing the two dimensions, and individuals were assigned to the appropriate category on the basis of their scores.

Findings on Self-Disclosure

When individuals in the three types of dyads are ranked according to their degree of self-disclosure, as presented in Table 1, only negligible sex differences in same-sex friendships emerge, but in cross-sex friendships fewer men than women are low disclosers.

We see that 40% of women in comparison to 38% of men are high disclosers, and 60% of both sexes are moderate (Davidson and Duberman in press).3 High self-disclosure, however, drops to 32% for both sexes in cross-sex dyads. It is interesting to note that although no woman is a low self-discloser in a friendship with another woman, 13% of women as compared with 3% of men become such in a cross-sex relationship.

Table 1. Level of Self-Disclosure by Type of Dyad

The content of what is disclosed also differs for men and women, as seen in Table 2. Although a higher percentage of men than of women report feeling comfortable in revealing both weaknesses and strengths in both same-sex and cross-sex relationships, it is noteworthy that no male reveals only weaknesses, and no female reveals only strengths. Further, a third of the women say they reveal only weaknesses in friendships with men, whereas almost a third of the men reveal only strengths in friendships with women.

Contrary to the Booth and Hess (1974) finding of diminished self-disclosure of married respondents to persons outside the marital relationship, this study reveals a differential in their favor, as evidenced in Table 3.

From Table 3 we see that 56% of married women, in contrast to 29% of single women, are characterized as high self-disclosers to their female friends, but, more surprisingly, a similar disparity is observed with respect to their self-revelations to male friends, 53% vs. 22%. Thus marriage would appear to facilitate, rather than inhibit, self-disclosing behavior in women, regardless of the sex of the friend.

Table 2. “Do you feel comfortable in revealing both weaknesses and strengths?”

Table 3. Level of Self-Disclosure by Marital Status and Type of Dyad

Since self-disclosure also increased with age for women (see Table 4), some doubt might be cast on marriage as the implicating factor, were it not for the fact that age does not appear to make a difference for men.

Whether in same-sex or cross-sex friendships, the greatest frequency of high self-disclosure is found in women of working class origin. Working class men manifest the lowest percentage of high self-disclosers in friendships with other men, but not in friendships with women, as documented in Table 5.

In contradiction to previous research, high self-disclosure is not always predicated on high closeness. As indicated in Table 6, 22% of women and 27% of men reveal personal concerns to their same-sex friends in the absence of feelings of closeness. A similar pattern obtains in cross-sex friendships, though a greater proportion of men is highly self-disclosing without attendant closeness to their women friends than in the reverse situation.

Table 4. Level of Self-Disclosure by Age and Type of Dyad

Discussion

The findings of this study, although only suggestive in view of the small size and non-representative character of the sample, suggest some revisions of received opinion. Contrary to previous research, men are not substantially more confiding to women than they are to men as the hypothesis of less loss of face might dictate, nor, apparently, do women express their submissiveness to men in terms of unreciprocated revelations. As mentioned earlier, divulgence does not always signify an abrogation of power nor is it necessarily a reward to the recipient. Listening may represent a burden that men are less willing to bear than women. Alternatively, men may feel less social distance towards women than women towards men.

Table 5. Level of Self-Disclosure by Social Class and Type of Dyad

Table 6. Level of Self-Disclosure by Level of Closeness and Type of Dyad

Examination of the content of what is disclosed helps to illuminate the sex difference. Men’s predilection for revealing only strengths and women’s candor concerning weaknesses in cross-sex friendships suggest that both sexes feel more constrained to fulfill gender role expectations in their relationships with the other sex.4 The compulsion to maintain this kind of facade may bespeak a lesser intimacy in cross-sex friendships, as indicated also by the lower percentage of both men and women who reveal both strengths and weaknesses. Such lack of closeness might be attributed either to social norms regulating the relationship between men and women friends or to the greater heterogeneity in this type of dyad. A test of homogeneity occupation, and social class had the result of categorizing 23% of both types of same-sex dyads as being highly homogeneous, in contrast to 16% of the cross-sex dyads. The greatest disparities found were in age and occupation. However, it should be recalled that there is no appreciable difference in closeness between male-male and cross-sex dyads—15% and 13%, respectively, were rated as “very close.” (For female-female dyads the percentage is 32.) Putting these two findings together, we conclude that neither the heterogeneity of cross-sex dyads nor special definitions of appropriate behavior between men and women is responsible, but rather the fact that the dyad contains a man. In accordance with previous research we conclude that women, apparently, have a greater capacity for intimacy and self-disclosure.

This conclusion is further supported by the fact of the substantially similar confiding behavior of men and women in cross-sex dyads that would seem to exclude the possible operation of a power differential. More likely, gratifications other than mutual self-disclosure are sought in such relationships. Many respondents mentioned a desire to obtain a perspective on their current love interest from a non-involved person of the opposite sex, as well as to expand their viewpoint in general. Another frequently cited advantage was the opportunity for an escort or date without sexual hassle or need for commitment.

We hypothesized earlier that self-disclosure would be highest among married women on the grounds that any threat posed by other women is removed by marriage and that the marital state breeds a similarity of life styles. On the other hand, room was made for the possibility that the marital relationship itself might satisfy a great part of the need for intimacy, as indicated in the frequently heard comment that “my spouse is my best friend.”

The findings supported the former expectation of enhanced self-disclosure on the part of married women. One might speculate that having attained the goal of marriage, women feel more relaxed with both sexes—less competitive with other women and less needful for making a favorable impression on men. (In the case of men marriage makes less of a difference.) Perhaps problems requiring discharge to a sympathetic ear accumulate more for women in the marital state than for men. Before assigning this catalytic power to marriage, however, we encountered the uncomfortable suspicion that marriage might be a spurious variable masking the influence of age, as in Zeisel’s famous example that unmarried persons eat more candy than the married do (1968). The sample was too small to introduce marital status and age as simultaneous variables, but the effects of age alone were investigated and found to be discriminatory for women but not for men. Although the question of whether age or marital status accounts for more of the variance in female self-disclosure cannot be answered definitively with the data at hand, this sex difference suggests marriage as the more relevant factor. This notion is further supported by class differences in the confiding behavior of married women, as reported by Booth and Hess (1974), and corroborated in the present study.

Assignment of social class in Table 5 was made on the basis of responses to the question, “In what social class would you place your family during the period you were growing up? Working class, lower middle class, or upper middle class.” Consequently, it is indicative only of probable socialization experiences and limited by a subjective definition of social class. Still it is suggestive that women of working class origin are more likely than either lower or upper middle class women to be high self-disclosers in both same-sex and cross-sex friendships, while men from working class backgrounds are less likely only in friendships with other men. We may hazard the possibility that working class men, as much as their wives, suffer from their self-imposed restraint vis-a-vis their wives. In fact, as Booth and Hess (1974) suggest, they may feel themselves to be in a double bind. The very wife who ostensibly craves more communication of personal feelings from her husband may be suspected of finding him unmanly if he satisfied her desire. Middle class men, on the other hand, may be more prone to establish intimacy with their wives, and have less need of feminine nurturance outside of marriage.

The lowest cross-sex disclosure is found in lower middle class women. Such women may be more subject to traditional norms that place restrictions upon the topics of communication between the sexes and legitimate jealousy on the part of significant others.

Perhaps the most surprising finding of this study is the far from perfect correlation between feelings of closeness and self-disclosure in friendly (as opposed to stranger-like) relationships. The fact that self-disclosure is not a concomitant of closeness in a relationship for more than a fifth of the respondents challenges interpretation. Presumably other factors that mitigate the risks of self-disclosure are at work. On the reward side these might be related to intensity of the need for self-revelation, on the cost side, relative indifference to the reaction of the friend. Similarly, we see that high feelings of closeness do not always bring high self-disclosure in their wake. Further study is needed to clarify the relationship between closeness and self-disclosure.

In summary, it is evident that the predictions made at the outset on the basis of the factors of power, perception of rewards, gender role socialization, and homogeneity are largely borne out by the data, with the important exception that friendships between women are not marked by greater self-disclosure than those between men. Self-disclosure, however, is greater in same-sex than in cross-sex dyads, and men and women differ chiefly in which aspects of the self they choose to reveal.

Notes

1 I gratefully acknowledge the invaluable contributions of Kathleen Maurer Smith who not only conducted six of the interviews, but, more importantly, constructed the indices of self-disclosure, homogeneity, and closeness, coded the interviews, provided the data for the tables, and supplied many of the bibliographical items, as part of her Master’s essay “Variations in Homogeneity, Self-Disclosure and Closeness in Same-Sex and Cross-Sex Friendship Dyads” for which I served as major adviser. Her unit of analysis, however, was the dyad rather than the individual. I wish also to thank Beth G. Hess for her helpful suggestions in revising the questionnaire, establishing the coding structure, and, above all, enlisting the aid of student interviewers at the County College of Morris in New Jersey.

2 Rubin and associates link women’s greater self-disclosure to gender-role socialization rather than to power differentials.

3 Davidson and Duberman, utilizing a comparable sample, obtained similar results.

4 An alternative explanation is that men experience greater subjective awareness of strengths than women do. The question of sex differences in self-esteem for this sample is explored in an as-yet unpublished paper available from the author titled, “The influence of gender roles on reciprocal ratings in same-sex and cross-sex friendship dyads.”

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