Marketing Department, Stern School of Business, New York University, New York, NY 10012, USA.
Psychol Sci. 2009 Nov;20(11):1414-20. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02461.x. Epub 2009 Oct 21.
Understanding when people reveal unfavorable information about themselves is both practically and theoretically important. Existing research suggests that people tend not to adopt stable disclosure strategies, and consequently disclose too much information in some situations (e.g., embarrassing personal information on Facebook) and too little in other situations (e.g., risky sexual behavior to a physician during diagnosis of a possible sexually transmitted disease). We sought to identify a domain-general cue that predicts self-disclosure patterns. We found that metacognitive ease, or fluency, promoted greater disclosure, both in tightly controlled lab studies (Studies 1a, 1b, and 3) and in an ecologically valid on-line field study (Study 4). Disfluency tended to prime thoughts and emotions associated with risk, which might be one reason why people who experience disfluency are less comfortable with self-disclosure (Studies 2 and 3). We conclude by discussing the implications of these results for theory and clinical practice.
了解人们何时透露不利于自己的信息，无论在实践上还是理论上都很重要。现有研究表明，人们往往不会采用稳定的披露策略，因此在某些情况下（例如在 Facebook 上披露尴尬的个人信息）会披露过多的信息，而在其他情况下（例如在诊断可能的性传播疾病时向医生披露危险的性行为）则披露过少。我们试图确定一个普遍的线索，以预测自我披露模式。我们发现，元认知流畅度（或流畅度）促进了更大程度的披露，这既在严格控制的实验室研究（研究 1a、1b 和 3）中得到了验证，也在生态有效的在线现场研究（研究 4）中得到了验证。不流畅往往会引发与风险相关的想法和情绪，这可能是人们在经历不流畅时对自我披露感到不自在的原因之一（研究 2 和 3）。最后，我们讨论了这些结果对理论和临床实践的意义。
