Personality Correlates of Actual Self-Disclosure

Abstract

A questionnaire which obtained actual self-disclosure about five topics—interests, personality, studies, body, and money—and instruments which measured seven personality traits were administered to 52 Ss. Seven self-disclosure scores were obtained from the questionnaire, one depth rating for each topic, a total depth score (sum of the five topic depth ratings), and an amount of disclosure score (count of words written in responding to all five topic areas). All self-disclosure measures were correlated with the personality variables for males and females separately and also with sex. No significant relationships were found between the personality variables and the measures of self-disclosure for females. However, data suggested that more emotionally unstable males tended to disclose more about their personality and their health and physical appearance than the stable males. Although no significant correlations were found between masculinity-femininity as a personality trait and the measures of actual disclosure, females tended to disclose more than males about all topics except “money.”