Criticism
- The scope of the theory is limited
- Theory not fully supported by data
- Highest reciprocity may occur at middle levels; may be cycles of disclosure and reserve
- Needs take account of gender (males less open)
- Disclosure can increase as relationship deteriorates
- Single comparison (CL) index too simplistic
- In close relationships, self-centeredness lessens
- Onion metaphor: sexual; disclosure is active, usually symmetrical; self is not simply revealed but is constructed
- The original theory did not account for gender differences in vulnerability, but later research concludes that males are less open than females.
Read more about this topic: Social Penetration Theory
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige through being mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“In criticism I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)
“However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)