Written in the Spring of 2017
Introduction To Self-Disclosure
In counseling, there are many different methods a helper can use to facilitate the helping process. The different methods used vary from helper to helper, and are based on perceived success, training, past experience with different methods, and the theoretical school of psychology of the helper.
One of the most complicated of these methods is self-disclosure. Self-disclosure is defined as “…verbalized personal revelations bade by the counselor to the client” (Edwards & Murdock 384). However, self-disclosure can also be taught to a client as a skill, so it is not strictly a confession from the helper to the client. Regardless of that fact, self-disclosure is one of the very important aspects of the counseling process. It helps develop intimacy with the listener, adds excitement to the relationship, and even has the possibility to model good behavior for the client. It is mainly used by humanistic psychologists, cognitive-behavioral psychologists, and neo-psychoanalytic psychologists. However, traditional psychoanalytic psychologists, and many others, do not see the value of self-disclosure, or at least believe that the negative outcomes of self-disclosure outweigh the positive outcomes. For instance, traditional psychoanalytic psychologists generally believe that self-disclosure will increase the likelihood of transference, thereby compromising the therapeutic relationship and preventing the client from proceeding through the counseling process in a productive fashion.
Because of the controversial nature of self-disclosure, much research has been done on various aspects of it. This paper will examine three separate studies that investigate three different topics, all of them relating to self-disclosure. The purpose is to summarize the articles, describe their limitations, and answer the question that many psychologists are asking; is self disclosure truly desired by and helpful to the client?
Summary Of Articles
Article I: Self-Disclosure Through Sharing with the Public by Ahmet Sirin
Subject. The desire if this article was to see if and how people who write to an advice column use the self-disclosure skill. In the introduction, the article describes the many benefits and purposes of self-disclosure in counseling, as well as how clients can learn self-disclosure as a skill.
Method. The data of this study was was composed of letters sent the the “Guzin Abla” (Agony Aunt) column of the Hurriyet newspaper in the first three months of 2005. They were examined using content analysis and other qualitative methods in order to reveal the self-disclosure skills in the letters. Content analysis is defined as “…a qualitative method or coding to study on the documents, transcripts, newspapers, or even of audio or video media for purposes of scientific research.” (Sirin 289).
Findings. The study found that the letters sent to the Agony Aunt column consisted of four different subjects; relationships, seeking assistance or information on specific matters, health, and social matters. During the three months, there were sixty-nine letters total. Forty-two were about relationships, sixteen discussed social matters, nine were about physical and/or mental health, two about animal health, and one was sent by a mother looking for a nanny for her children. The letters were sent by people ages seventeen to forty-five, with a concentration on ages eighteen to twenty-two. Also, twenty-two of the authors of the letters were female, and thirty-seven were men. The researchers discovered that most of the letters conveyed negative feelings such as vengeance, fear, lack of love, sorrow, and others. They concluded that the people who wrote the letters to Agony Aunt were unable to consult their friends or relatives, thus revealing the importance of the need for the self-disclosure skill.
Limitations. There are a few limitations to this research. First, the sample size they used was incredibly small, totaling only sixty-nine people. To generalize the results of this study to the population could prove to be problematic, because this particular group of people may not reflect the population, truly. To write the letters, they had to be literate, had to read the particular newspaper the Agony Aunt was published in, and had to have the time and means to write a letter to the column. There is a possibility that there may be differences in groups of people that are less educated, groups that read a different newspaper (for instance, if the newspaper aligned itself with a certain political party), and those that do not have the time or means to write these letters. Furthermore, there may be cultural differences. Because this study was done on citizens of Turkey, they may have certain cultural values that many others in the world do not, that could affect the importance or inclination towards self-disclosure.
Article II: Characteristics of Therapist Self-Disclosure in the Counseling Process by Carla Edwards and Nancy Murdock
Subject. The topic of this research article was how practicing helpers view their uses of self-disclosure, and how that aligns with client perceptions of the helper. The researchers decided on this topic because, while there have been numerous research studies on how clients react to self-disclosing helpers, there is little research on the reasoning of therapists who self-disclose. They also decided to test for possible differences in disclosure “as a function of gender, ethnic origin, and theoretical orientation of the participants.” (Edwards & Murdock 385)
Method. The subjects of this study were 184 members of the American Psychological Association, 49% of which being men, and 51% being women. They were 88% Caucasian, 1% African American, 4% Asian, and 1% “other.” While 400 total psychologists were sent the survey, only 184 responded. In the questionnaire they were asked about their reasons for using self-disclosure (client desires, modeling, to increase perceived similarity, to increase trustworthiness, to increase perceived expertness, or to increase perceived attractiveness) and given the chance to check all that applied. They were also asked about the subject of their self-disclosure, be it personal feelings, interpersonal relationships, sexual issues, attitudes, professional issues, and success/failure issues. Lastly, they were asked on a 5-point scale, how often they self-disclosed (1=always to 5=never).
Findings. The researchers found that the mean amount of self-disclosure was a 3.13 on the 5-point Likert-scale, indicating they sometimes self-disclosed. They also found that the psychoanaltyic psychologists were least likely to self-disclose, while the humanitsitc psychologists were most likely to self-disclose. In terms of reasons for self-disclosure, the most popular reasons were to increase perceived counselor trustworthiness, and to model disclosure as a desired behavior for clients. They also found that the most common subjects of self-disclosure were professional issues and success/failure stories, while personal feelings and sexual issues were the least often disclosed subjects. This lined up with clients’ preference for subjects, with professional issues being the most desired subject, and sexual issues being the least desired subject.
Another thing the researchers found was that there was no significant differences in self-disclosure in gender, and while there were also no significant differences in disclosure based on race, they were tentative to conclude that this was truly the case, because only 22% of the subjects were not Caucasian.
Limitations. One of the limitations of this study was already discussed in the results, this limitation being that 88% of the participants were Caucasian. Also, because the survey was only sent to members of the American Psychological Association, all of whom are doctoral-level practitioners, these findings might not be able to be generalized to all helpers. A third limitation is that respondents were not asked to report things like amount of professional experience, typical client problems, and educational background, all three of which have the possibility of leading to different results.
Article III: Counselor Self-Disclosure, East Asian American Client Adherence to Asian Cultural Values, and Counseling Process by Kim, B. S., Hill, C. E., Gelso, C. J., Goates, M. K., Asay, P. A., & Harbin, J. M.
Subject. The last article investigated the relationship between Asian cultural values and perception of counselor self-disclosure. The researchers hypothesized that Asian American clients who were exposed to counselor disclosures would rate the session more positively than clients who are not exposed to the disclosures.
Method. There were sixty-two participants, thirty-three of them male and twenty-nine of them female. They were all East Asian American college students at a large mid-Atlantic university, ages eighteen to twenty-five. They were given a survey about their adherence to Asian cultural values, and then engaged in a one-session counseling session with a counselor who either self-disclosed or refrained from self-disclosing. There were seventeen counselors, all of them European American, eleven of them women and six of them men, ranging from age twenty-three to thirty-eight. All of them were at various levels of their education after their bachelor’s degree. During the counseling sessions, there were observers in the room monitoring how often the counselors self-disclosed. After the counseling session, the subjects were then given another survey in which they described the quality of the session, their bond with the counselor, the perceived counselor credibility, the perceived counselor empathy, the perceived helpfulness of the disclosure, the perceived intimacy of the disclosure.
Findings. In terms of adherence to Asian cultural values, they found that the East Asian American subjects adhered less to these values than the Asian American subjects of another study. They also found that the clients’ adherence to Asian cultural values was not a predictor of session outcome. The third thing they found was that sessions with higher outcome scores had significantly more disclosures than did the sessions with lower outcome scores.
Limitations. One of the limitations of this study was the fact that their findings were based on only one session of counseling, while normal therapeutic relationships are based on many sessions of counseling. Also, the presence of observers in the room may have been off-putting for the clients or the counselors, resulting in skewed data. Lastly, because the counselors were all at different levels in their education, with some being masters students, some being doctoral students, and some already having PhDs, there may have been a difference in levels of skill when self-disclosing, which could affect the perception of the counseling session.
Recapitulation
Summary
While all three of the articles took very different approaches to studying self-disclosure, they revealed some incredibly interesting realizations about this particular helping skill. They revealed a possible need or desire for people to self-disclose, leading to the conclusion that this is a behavior that should be taught to clients throughout counseling sessions. The studies also revealed that most psychologists want to self-disclose information about their successes/failures, and professional issues, which are the two most desired subjects of disclosure for most clients, indicating that most psychologists are not self-disclosing for selfish reasons, but are instead revealing things that the clients are interested in, thus strengthening the bond between the two. The last thing the studies revealed was that cultural values most likely do not have an impact on self-disclosure, meaning culture likely does not determine positive perception of self-disclosure, and that it is most likely a desire that many people across cultures have.
Ideas For Future Research
There are many interesting topics that could be investigated based on these three studies. Perhaps one could study how the education level of the counselor affects how the self-disclosure is perceived. Perhaps, for instance, self-disclosure in a graduate student could be perceived as unprofessional, while it could be perceived as helpful and insightful in a counselor with a PhD. Another thing that could be researched is the perception of self-disclosure based on factors like gender or age. It is possible that women may have a more positive view of self-disclosure, or young adults could view it as self-involved and patronizing.
Limitations Of Critique
There are many limitations of this critique, the first being that I will likely never be able to speak with these researchers in depth about their articles. There is a possibility that speaking with them could illuminate ideas that were not particularly evident in their article. Also, because I am not a professional counselor, there are definitely aspects of the counseling process I do not understand. Perhaps some of my claims of the limitations of the articles, because they do not come from a background of higher counseling education, do not need to be considered. For example, maybe when I claimed that because article two contained subjects with PhDs and that there could possibly be differences in counselors with master’s degrees, I could be making that assumption based on personal speculation, while actual trained counselors may know that there really is no difference in the degree level of the counselors. Lastly, I am limited by the fact that my understanding of the data analyses in the articles is limited. The graphs displayed in the articles contain a lot of symbols and statistics that I do not yet understand, because I have yet to complete my Research Statistics class. It is possible that there is data in the tables, that is not inherently stated in the written analyses, that I do not understand and that are crucial to the interpretation of the results.
References
Edwards, C. E., & Murdock, N. L. (1994). Characteristics of Therapist Self-Disclosure in the Counseling Process. Journal Of Counseling & Development, 72(4), 384-389. doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6676.1994.tb00954.x
Kim, B. S., Hill, C. E., Gelso, C. J., Goates, M. K., Asay, P. A., & Harbin, J. M. (2003). Counselor Self-Disclosure, East Asian American Client Adherence to Asian Cultural Values, and Counseling Process. Journal Of Counseling Psychology, 50(3), 324. doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.50.3.324
Şirin, A. (2008). Self -Disclosure Through Sharing with the Public. Journal Of Instructional Psychology, 35(3), 288-293.
