The effects of topic-intimacy and interviewer self-disclosure or probing on interviewee self-disclosure and liking in male dyads

Includes bibliographical references (pages 43-48)To examine the differential effectiveness of several interviewing techniques, 60 male subjects were interviewed by a male interviewer who either probed, self-disclosed, or in a control condition only presented discussion topics. Topics were varied in that they were either high-intimacy or low-intimacy. The purpose here was to explore the effect these variables had on increasing level of self-disclosure in interviewees. A post-interview questionnaire was also administered to assess in which condition the interviewer was ???liked??? more by interviewees. Experimental results show that males self-disclosed more to the interviewer when he probed or self-disclosed on highly intimate topics (p < .01). Also, subjects liked the interviewer more (p < .05) when he disclosed on highly intimate topics than when he disclosed on low-intimacy topics