Testing a Model of Disclosure Benefits Based on Identifiability of the Discloser and Features of the Confidant

Previous research has demonstrated that public, as compared with private, disclosure can lead to greater psychological symptom reduction. It has been theorized by Kelly and Macready (2009) that the distal mechanism underlying this benefit of public disclosure is that humans' survival on the ancestral plain was enhanced by recruiting the help of others for their personal problems by non-anonymously revealing their emotional experiences to them. Thus, humans today may have inherited the predisposition to disclose publicly; and when they do so, they may experience a reduction in psychological symptoms. The current study tested the hypotheses derived from this idea that the more identifiable (as opposed to anonymous) a person was when disclosing and the more connected and resourceful the confidants were, the fewer psychological symptoms that person would experience. Fifty secret topics constructed by Lane and Wegner (1995) have been adopted in the present study. Three hundred and fifty four undergraduates reported on the identifiability of their previous disclosures on each of these topics and the features of their confidants. Hierarchical linear modeling revealed that identifability alone, in addition to the interaction of confidants' connectedness and resourcefulness, predicted the discloser's having less psychological disturbance. Thus, findings from the resent study provided support for the idea that disclosing more publicly is more healthful.