Date of Conferral

2022

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Psychology

Advisor

Brandon Cosley

Abstract

Communication is an important aspect of a relationship of any kind as thoughts, feelings, and ideas are conveyed from one party to the other. However, communication styles vary, which can contribute to lack of comprehension of content among individuals resulting in misinterpretation. This study focused on examining whether trust, an identified variable indicative of a secure relationship, could influence individuals’ willingness to emotionally self-disclose within a romantic relationship. One hundred fifty-eight individuals were randomly placed into one of three groups (two were priming groups) for the purpose of assessing whether trust influenced their willingness to disclose their emotions to their significant other as measured by the Emotional Self-Disclosure Scale. It was hypothesized that priming a feeling of trust would result in a greater willingness to emotionally self-disclose compared to the no-priming condition as well as a relationship priming condition. One-way analysis of variance was conducted to analyze the data. The overall test was not significant. Exploratory analyses demonstrated that the mean for the trust prime group was statistically higher than for the no-priming condition, but those results should be cautiously interpreted. This study contributes to positive social change and current knowledge on emotional disclosure within relationships and makes an original contribution by using a casual design.

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