Social Penetration Theory

When I first met my roommate freshman year of college, she could tell right away that I was short and had brown hair. As time went on that day, I was able to share basic information about my family members, my boyfriend, and my hopeful major. After living together for about a month, my roommate knew more than just the basic information about my family, love life, school, and other personal facts. Two years lady, I still have the same roommate and we have touched on every subject, including politics and religion, even though the information is pretty basic. Other topics, however, she knows almost anything there is to know and the extent of stories can grow each day as an event occurs. I feel I can trust her and that I don't have to worry about how much I self-disclose to her.

Layers of an onion compared to the personality is how Altman and Taylor describe the "Social Penetration Theory." A personality is broken into different categories and each has a depth that may be shared as information is shared with another individual. This is referred to as "Breadth and Depth," (Griffin, 2006). There are also positive and negative effects from self-disclosing information to another.

When I first met my roommate, she only learned basic facts from a variety of categories, but in the last 2 years, she has heard several stories that relate with each topic. Self-disclosing to her has a positive effect. I know I can trust her because no one else has ever repeated my information I have shared with only her, and if there is a problem that occurs, I can relate back to another situation that I have shared with her before.

References:
Griffin, E. (2006). A first look at communication theory (6th ed.). Boston: McGraw Hill.