Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Week 8 Social Penetration

For the social penetration theory, I personally think that there are many examples around and that it is constantly happening in our daily lives. I will use a a clip from a movie for this analysis. Most love genre movies usually involves two individuals trying to get to know each other. This is one of them where I will be using the movie 'My Sassy Girl' as my example. 









A little synopsis of this movie. It is about a typical nice guy called Charlie who falls in love with a hellion called Jordan. Both individuals come from very different background and both of them first met at the New York subway station. Cutting the story short, both of them started going for a few exciting dates and along that exchanging stories through conversation. and it all goes to a point that Charlie start falling deeply for Jordan. After three months, Jordan asked Charlie to meet her at Central park to exchange love letters. This is where Jordan told Charlie that she needs time to heal from the loss of her fiancee. They made an agreement that they will meet there at the same time the following year. A year has passed and Charlie came to the place but Jordan was not there. He read her letter and found out that her fiancee actually died and that he reminded her of her fiancee and all the dates that they went are reenactments of her previous dates with her late fiancee. (IMDb 2012)


A typical story line revolving around knowing two individuals trying to get to know each other. Applying the social penetration theory to explain this, it is evident that the process of disclosure plays an important role in relationship development.

Social penetration theory can be defined as the "the process of increasing disclosure and intimacy in a relationship." (Allensworth 1996, p.1)



According to West and Turner (2010) the social penetration theory assumes that;

  • Relationships progress from nonintimate to intimate
  • relational development is generally systematic and predictable
  • relational development includes depenetration and dissolution
  • self-disclosure is at the core of relationship development. (p.169)

Simply said, this theory seeks to explain the processes that occur during a relationship. This processes can be observed in our daily lives relationship with different people and it is through the process of disclosure that individuals become close to one another. 

The disclosure process is explained by Griffins (2012) to be a process where two individuals reveals their personal matters voluntarily with one another. In other words, both individuals are exchanging information that may make them vulnerable to each other. This can be seen throughout the 'My Sassy Girl' movie where the process of disclosure continues occurring throughout most of the scenes.

The onion metaphor is used to explain the process of social penetration. The creators of this theory Altman & Taylor have used this metaphor to explain the personality structure which is defined by Griffin (2012, p. 114) to be "onion-like layers of beliefs and feelings about self, others, and the world; deeper layers are more vulnerable, protected, and central to self-image."

The human personality is like an onion, consisting of several layers, where the public self is on the outer layer and the most private self at the core. The human personality will have different aspects which may include all the values, interests and emotions. It is possible that we have a casual friend that knows a lot of things about ourselves. But then again, to what extent to they know? Here the concept of depth & breadth plays a vital role.


Referring to the 'My Sassy Girl' movie, through the process of disclosure, Charlie and Jordan are getting closer after each day spent together, more breadth is covered and depth as well. For example the part where Jordan disclose the information concerning her being 'left' by her fiancee to Charlie.


Depth is the degree of intimacy. Therefore, with more depth and breadth, you get more intimate with a particular person.

It needs to be noted that the process of disclosure is reciprocal.The law of reciprocity stated that the process of openness in one person will lead to openness in another person. Referring to the example, when Charlie and Jordan are engaging in a conversation with each other on any particular aspect, it is most likely that there is an exchange process of information. In simpler words, if you open up to someone, that someone might open up to you as well. 

But we cannot always assume that if we open up to someone, that someone will open up us back. There are factors that may affect this. Such as gender, there is an assumption that women opens up more than men.

It is stated that the speed of penetration is rapid at first but slows down reaching towards the core where the most private informations are. This is due to the social norms where you risk being too vulnerable to a person when you disclose too much information especially the most private ones. This is very evident in the example 'My Sassy Girl' movie where it took Jordan a year just to disclose the information about her fiancee being 'dead' to Charlie and that she is not fully healed from that. 


There is a social norm against telling too much things too fast where most individuals may be overwhelmed or even be disgusted with so much information all at once. Due to this, depenetration may occur. It is defined by West & Turner (2010) to be the "slow deterioration of relationship" (p.170). This process explains that a relationship will not end up just like that but goes through a gradual withdrawal from the deeper layer towards the outer layer. This happens in most relationship cases in our everyday lives. However we should not be quick to assume that everyone follow this social norm. Some individuals might be accepting with all information overflowing to them and in return may also open up the same amount of information back.


I would critic this part of the theory to be not fully explaining on what may occur next. Depenetration assumes that a particular relationship will deteriorate. There are some cases that some relationships actually become more intimate after a slight depenetration. It may take a moment for some individuals to accept a particular fact or truth about someone, and then when they did, penetration can continue to occur for some cases whereas for some cases, depenetration may still occur.

Applying the stages of the penetration (Orientation stage, Exploratory stage,Affective stage, Stable stage & Depenetration stage)to the 'My Sassy Girl' example. It is evident that Charlie and Jordan's relationship did go through all those stages except for the depenetration stage. From the movie example, despite Charlie knowing that Jordan could not date him due to the fact that he reminded her of her late fiancee, does not cause depenetration to occur but more like an additional stage between affective and stable stage. This just shows that not all relationships follow a particular structure such as those stages in social penetration.


My personal critic would be that not all relationships may go through all the penetration stage. Some may just go through the first two stages and skip a few stages and end up directly to the depenetration stage. Some cases may be that after the depenetration stage, it goes back to the stable stage instead.We cannot always assume that a relationship progress through a specific pattern.

Another concept in the social penetration theory is the cost benefit analysis. This concept explains that we all expect something in return from a particular relationship. There is a system of rewards and cost. If the rewards exceeds the cost, the relationship will develop further. Otherwise, it will either reach a stop or even go through depenetration. The social exchange theory best explains what is going on between two parties that evaluate each other's cost and benefit in a particular relationship. The theory states that individuals will seeks to maximise their benefits and minimise their costs.

For the example presented, the benefit for both individuals is 'love' it seems. It is safe to assume that their love exceeds all cost.


It is a question of who is worthy of your time and attention and then what are the benefits after your 'investment' towards them. 


Applying this to our daily lives, indeed we do expect something from our friends and colleagues in a certain relationship and that can be either be in a form of attention, mutual agreement or any other benefits. The cost might be in the form of deviance or resentment and other negatives.






References:

Allensworth, N. (1996). Social penetration: A description, research and evaluation. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southern States Communication Association, Memphis, Tennessee, March 27-31, 1996. Available at: http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/14/e0/03.pdf

Griffin, E., (2012) A First Look At Communication Theory (8th Edition). New York. McGraw Hill.


IMDb (2012) Plot Summary for My Sassy Girl. Retrieved on March 20 2012, from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0404254/plotsummary.

West, R., Turner, L., H., (2010) Introducing Communication Theory: Analysis and Application 4th Edition). New York. McGraw Hill.


West, R., Turner, L., H., (2011) Understanding Interpersonal Communication: Making Choices in Changing Times. Boston. Wadsworth

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