The study of self-disclosure has been developed and elaborated mainly in the United States, and only a few studies have directly examined self-disclosure in the Japanese cultural context. This study was designed to extend the study of self-disclosure to Japanese culture, and using the concept of ingroup and outgroup relationships, examine the relationship between the level of self-disclosure and perceived social attraction in initial interaction between Japanese strangers. Based on the literature on self-disclosure and features of Japanese culture and communication, two hypotheses were constructed: Hl: For the ingroup members, the high discloser will be perceived to be more socially attractive than the low discloser. H2: For the outgroup members, the low discloser will be perceived to be more socially attractive than the high discloser. As respondents, a total of 328 Japanese college graduate and undergraduate students living in the Kansai area in Japan participated in the research. The data collection instrument consisted of McCroskey and McCain's (1974) social attraction scale and a culture-specific scale of social attraction constructed by the researcher. A two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and ~ tests were used to test the two hypotheses and interaction between the two variables. In addition, to test gender effects, the data were analyzed by using three, three-way ANOVAs. The results of the data analyses revealed that in initial interaction between Japanese strangers, the level of self-disclosure was a main factor in determining the stranger's perceived social attraction. Low self-disclosure led to positive evaluation of perceived social attraction, and high self-disclosure led to negative evaluation of perceived social attraction. The results also suggested that the stranger's group identification mediated the relationship between the stranger's level of self-disclosure and perceived social attraction. Ingroup membership produced greater perceived social attraction than did outgroup membership. Thus, the highest perceived social attraction was produced by the low disclosing stranger identified as being an ingroup member. Further, Japanese subjects distinguished ingroup and outgroup membership for low self-disclosure, but not for high self-disclosure. No significant effects due to gender were found in this study.

In this dissertation, I explore the ways in which theories and concepts of face-to-face interaction and disclosure management can be used to understand the construction of privacy on an intercollegiate sport team. The purpose of this research was to examine how team members talked to each other about themselves, and how they managed the personal information shared. Erving Goffman's model of social interaction and his concepts of "face" and "supportive work" frame the analyses of this study. Through semi-structured interviews and direct observations of the members of an NCAA Division III women's basketball team, I discovered the team's rules and the development of their communication norms, which were most salient during discussions involving the players' tattoos and two unanticipated team meetings. It was important to the players of this team that they were a close-knit group who got along well and supported each other. The players questioned the commitment level of a player who disrupted the team's closeness by breaking a rule or norm and refused to make amends for her discretion. My findings suggest that the team members negotiated how to demonstrate their commitment to the team and to each other by performing supportive and remedial work through disclosure during these two meetings. Even under those specific circumstances, a player maintained some amount of autonomy by controlling the depth of her personal information that she shared. Interestingly, the players did not indicate an experienced loss of control over their personal information after they shared it with other team members at the meetings due to the team's negotiation of information boundary management. Additionally, I found that the symmetry and reciprocity of disclosure differed between player-to-player and player-to-coach interactions.

There is no abstract available for this dissertation.

The purpose of this study was to investigate relationships among adolescents¡¦ online misrepresentation, self-disclosure, cyber-relationship motivation and loneliness. Survey study was conducted on sample consisted of 612 Taiwanese adolescents, 13-18 years of age with instruments including scales of online misrepresentation, self-disclosure, cyber-relationship motivation and of loneliness. Findings indicated that 45.9% of the respondents admit to having online deception experience while 4.4% report prevalent online misrepresentation, with those who live in Pintung, study in specific grade orwith exposure to cyber-relationship having much more online misrepresentation. In addition, not all constructs of self-disclosure, cyber-relationship motivation and loneliness are associated with online misrepresentation. Only accuracy and valence of self-disclosure, easier communication, emotional support, away from the real world and sexual partners of cyber-relationship motivation and loneliness are associated with specific constructs of online misrepresentation. Regression analyses suggested all constructs of self-disclosure in real-life as well as anonymity and emotional support of cyber-relationship motivation have moderate explanatory power for online self-disclosure, whereas accuracy and valence of self-disclosure in real-life as well as depth of control and accuracy of online self-disclosure have low explanatory power for cyber-relationship motivation, indicating that there are factors needed to be explored.

The aim of this study attempts to explore in which circumstance users would self-disclosure on Facebook with check-in behavior by considering extraversion and narcissism as psychological factors. Furthermore, in order to examine the relationships between different behaviors on Facebook, self-disclosure, exhibitionism and check-in intensity, this study used exhibitionism as the mediator to discuss if users¡¦ cognition of exhibitionism toward check-in would influence their attempt on check-in and clarify the attributes which make users behave in this way. Finally, a framework is proposed based on the results. Purposive sampling was used in the study. Questionnaire data were collected by the Internet and totally received 523 valid respondents. The study used LISREL structural equation models to test goodness of fit, validity, and furthermore adopted full model to examine the hypotheses. The results showed that the extraversion has an impact on the extent of self-disclosure on Facebook; however, narcissism does not have a significant effect on self-disclosure. As for the relationship between self-disclosure, exhibitionism and check-in intensity, self-disclosure would directly influence the attempts at check-in intensity. On the other hand, exhibitionism would also make self-disclosure have an impact on check-in intensity as a partial mediator.

How information technology (IT) influence peoples' everyday lives is becoming one of the most important research issues in IS field. In this study a theoretical model based on the self-disclosure theory and the social capital theory has been constructed to research how the bloggers' self-disclosure behaviors in the blogosphere may influence their subjective well-being (SWB). The results suggest that the trust in audiences, self-efficacy for self-disclosure, and stress were the key factors influencing the bloggers' self-disclosure behaviors. In addition, writing blogs provides a channel for users to release their inhibition, enhance their experiences of positive affect, increase their social support and social integration, and extend their social network, all of which in turn enhance the bloggers' perception of subjective well-being. These results provide significant theoretical and practical implications to researchers, enterprises, blog platform designers, and IT policy makers in understanding the roles of blogs in peoples' everyday lives.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate if bloggers¡¦ attachment style would affect their self-disclosure. In addition, the study also examines if bloggers¡¦ social support would affect blogger¡¦s self-efficacy to self-disclose, if self-disclosure would affect Internet interpersonal satisfaction. The results show that social support has positive effect on blogger¡¦s self-efficacy to self-disclosure, and blogger¡¦s self-efficacy to self-disclose has positive effect on self-disclosure and Internet interpersonal satisfaction. The results also show that bloggers of the secure attachment style have higher score than avoidant and anxious attachment styles on self-efficacy, self-disclosure, and Internet interpersonal satisfaction.

Behind ¡§e-mail¡§, ¡§BBS¡¨, ¡§Instant Messenger¡¨, weblog is regarded as the fourth kind of ¡§killer application¡¨ of the Internet. Therefore, ¡§weblog usage behavior¡¨ becomes a popular issue to study in not only industry but also academia. However, there is still not a complete framework to explain the motivation of blog usage and the influence factors. This research extends the ¡¥Attitudinal Belief Structure¡¦ of ¡¥Theory of Planned Behavior¡¦ and discusses which personal values among social value, utilitarian value, hedonic value and psychological value are the main motivations to use blog. In addition, we look into ¡¥past use¡¦, ¡¥attachment styles¡¦, ¡¥information recipients¡¦ and ¡¥blog type¡¦ deeply to find out which influence factors moderate the research model. This study used survey method to collect data from the Internet users and use PLS to analyze it. The result found the social value and psychological value are significant motivations among four personal values, and the influence of hedonic value is comparatively week. Then, the influence of personal value on blog usage intention is generally weaker among heavier users than among lighter users. Otherwise, psychological value influence people with preoccupied attachment style less. However, when the information recipients of blog trend to intimate friends, psychological value becomes more important. Finally, as types of blog are different, the influence of user¡¦s psychological value on future usage intention will be different. In sum, we extend the ¡¥Attitudinal Belief Structure¡¦ and renew it with social psychological theories to build a complete model. The research model can offer future study a framework to refer, and give weblog .com several marketing suggestions.

Empathy has been studied in composition since the 1960s, although it has not yet been adequately defined or theorized. Compositionists tend to employ the common definition of empathy as a feeling of identification with others using the familiar metaphor “walking in another’s shoes,” derived from the liberal-humanist therapeutic paradigm of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, which assumes a universal and transparent human experience. The purpose of this study is to develop a theoretical framework for empathy, answering the question: what is the function of empathy in the teaching of writing? Composition scholarship has shown three general orientations toward empathy: empathy embraced, empathy inferred, and empathy disdained. In response, I trace empathy’s development across disciplines as an aesthetic, ethical, physiological, and psychological construct using current research that shows empathy is a multifaceted, complex, cognitive process. In psychology and neuroscience, empathy is on the cutting edge of research, visible as brain activity in fMRI studies, theorized to have a vital role in evolution, and studied for its efficacy as a vehicle for altruistic action on behalf of stigmatized individuals and groups. Building on this multidisciplinary foundation, I offer an updated definition of empathy that invokes these scientific discoveries in order to account for empathy’s role in the teaching and study of writing and rhetoric. I theorize there are five empathies at work in composition—relational empathy, pedagogical empathy, critical empathy, rhetorical empathy, and discursive empathy. I describe these empathies using another metaphor, that of a watershed, to illustrate empathy as part of a natural process whereby the five empathies are separate like the tributaries in a river system yet as inseparable as the water that fills them. Empathy’s primary weaknesses, the familiarity and morality biases, are addressed; these are foundational to most criticisms of empathy. In the final chapter, I propose a sample course focusing on the study of rhetorical empathy, address the limitations of the study, provide many directions for further research, and argue that the study (and practice) of empathy itself and rhetorical empathy in particular are vital in today’s uncertain times. / Dissertation Chair: Dr. Bennett A. Rafoth Dissertation Committee Members: Dr. Gian S. Pagnucci and Dr. Michael M. Williamson

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