How Much Do Self-Disclosers Reveal to Professional Groups?

Previous studies of help-givers have stressed subjects' perceptions using nine generic problem areas and a list of 100 descriptive adjectives. The present study attempted to specify major personality variables entering into subjects' perceptions of adviser, high school counselor, college counselor, counseling psychologist, clinical psychologist, and psychiatrist. The personality variables of self-disclosure and risk were studied, as well as a comparison using the 100 descriptive adjectives. The results from 217 female undergraduate college students indicated that subjects revealed risky information to help-givers in the same manner that they tended to self-disclose. Findings also revealed that subjects tended to differentiate among help-givers in reference to the extent that they were willing to reveal risky information. Favorable findings with reference to validity for the Norton risk scale are discussed, as are discrepancies between descriptions of help-givers in the current study as opposed to descriptions of the same help-givers in previous studies