Saturday, June 21, 2008
Chapter 7: Not Disclosing
Reasons for not disclosing include: relationship-based motivation (seek to protect close involvements), individual-based motivation (maintain positive identity), and information-based motivation (interaction partner might be unresponsive and not helpful). The motivation that I feel strongly about is individual-based because relationships and information can be rebuilt. Identity, on the other hand, would be jeopardized (and harder to rebuild in my opinion) if negative information has been disclosed and cannot be taken back. I have a need to establish a privacy boundary, even about non-personal things. If I don't disclose something that is negative, then I feel I have a short-lived opportunity to overlook the truth long enough to maintain my confidence to achieve a goal. For example, if I bombed my SAT but still need to maintain my confidence in order to write a powerful essay for college admission, it helps to not disclose this SAT failure. By not disclosing, I would maintain a positive identity, which then helps to maintain my confidence as well.
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2 comments:
I agree that our identity may be something that is harder to reconstruct with others as well as ourselves. Often people form most of their impressions of you with the first encounter they have with you. This means that if you disclosed certain information the first time you met someone, every time they came into contact with you after that, that piece of information would stick out in their mind. They wouldn't be able to let it go, unless you displayed a different, stronger aspect of your identity that outweighed their initial thought of you.
You bring up a really good point when you talk about how it is more difficult to rebuild a positive identity by disclosing something. It is possible to rebuild the other two; by no means is it going to be easy. I am always amazed at how people use communication in order to disclose or not disclose certain things that they feel will have some impact on how everyone else perceives them. Personally, I have had experiences in all three reasons for not disclosing, and like I said the the individual-based motivation was the hardest. People always want to hold on to what image they imagine everyone else has about them.
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