Meeting Online: Do We Disclose More Personal Information Towards Same-Sex or Cross-Sex Partners in Online Interpersonal Communication?

• In Event: ICA Plenary Interactive Paper/Poster Session II
  In Interactive Paper Session: Communication and Technology Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

Although research on face-to-face interactions stresses the importance of gender in self-disclosure, the effect of gender composition in online interactions has hardly been studied. The first aim of this study was to test how gender composition affects self-disclosure in CMC. Furthermore, this study aims to compare text-based CMC and audiovisual CMC to test whether there is more self-disclosure in text based CMC compared to audiovisual CMC or face-to-face interaction and whether there is an interaction effect of communication condition and gender composition on self-disclosure. Therefore, 132 dyads (female-female, male-male, cross-sex) were randomly assigned to one of the three experimental conditions: text-based CMC, audiovisual CMC, and face-to-face communication. Preliminary results showed a direct effect of gender composition on intimate self-disclosure and an interaction effect for intermediate self-disclosure: within the cross-sex dyads, those who communicated via text-based CMC, disclosed more personal information than same-sex dyads communicating via audiovisual CMC or face-to-face.

Authors

• Marjolijn L. Antheunis, Tilburg University

• Alexander Peter Schouten, Tilburg U

• Mariek Vanden Abeele, Tilburg U