Avoidance of Self-Disclosure: An Experiment under Conditions of Self-Awareness

It was predicted that the assignment of intimate topics for self-disclosure in the presence of self-awareness producing stimuli would lead to negative affect and attempts to avoid actual disclosure. To test this prediction, an experiment was conducted in which male and female subjects described themselves while alone in a cubicle. Self-awareness was manipulated by the presence or absence of a mirror within the cubicle and subjects were assigned either intimate or non-intimate topics. As expected, subjects in the mirror-high intimacy condition enjoyed the task the least, evinced the highest average latencies in responding to the topics, and were seen as having provided the least complete descriptions.