Social Penetration Theory

Irwin Altman & Dalmas Taylor

It's a question of whether or not "birds of a feather flock together" or "opposites attract"!

In 1973, Taylor and Altman jointly created this theory in order to better describe how people go through stages of communication and what they are willing to self-disclose. Irwin Altman is a well-respected social psychologist who is a professor at Utah University and still is teaching today. Before his death in January of 1998, Dalmas Taylor was also a credible and accomplished professor in his field as his obituary eulogized.

The Onion of our Souls

Altman and Taylor compare people to onions as their means to analyze communication. They believe that people have multi-layered personalities, which are peeled back and revealed as they self-disclose to other people. For example, as students in a classroom progress through the quarter, they slowly reveal details about themselves and their lives to the people they befriend.

The Breadth and Depth of Self-Disclosure

Altman and Taylor were able to determine four points that described the process of Social Penetration Theory:

1. Peripheral items are exchanged more frequently and sooner than private information.
2. Self-disclosure is reciprocal, especially in the early stages of relational development.
3. Penetration is rapid at the start but slows down quickly as the tightly wrapped inner layers are reached.
4. Depenetration is a gradual process of layer-by-layer withdrawal.
(Griffin, pp.146-147)

Breadth and depth are equally important when measuring what each does for a relationship. Without both, relationships would not develop into what they become. For example, to really make a marriage work and keep it going is to keep the levels of breadth and depth of self-disclosure up. Without them, a marriage cannot continue and neither can relationships with family and/or friends.

Rewards and Costs

Coming from a scientific standpoint, Altman and Taylor were able to assign letters as mathematical representations of costs and rewards. They also borrowed the concepts from Thibaut and Kelley's Social Exchange Theory in order to describe the relation of costs and rewards of relationships. Thibaut and Kelley's key concepts of relational outcome, relational satisfaction, and relational stability serve as the foundation of Irwin and Taylor's rewards minus costs, comparison level, and comparison level of alternatives.

Outcomes = Rewards - Costs
Basically this means that people want to minimize their costs and maximize their rewards when they are in a relationship with somebody. If your costs are greater than your rewards, the relationship could be harmful to you. For example, the costs of staying in a physically and mentally abusive relationship far outweigh the rewards of staying so the person should get out before he or she gets hurt. On the other hand, for many people, becoming a parent is a great thing yet at the same time very frustrating. Obviously they would feel the rewards are much greater than the costs could ever be and continue developing their relationships with their children. How much we reveal to another person all depends on what we perceive the costs and/or rewards to be.

Satisfaction = Comparison Level (CL)
The first standard that we use to evaluate the outcomes of a situation is comparison level. As defined by Thibaut and Kelley, comparison level is "how happy or sad an interpersonal outcome makes a participant feel" (Griffin, p.149). "A person's comparison level (CL) is the threshold above which an outcome seems attractive" (Griffin, p. 149). We use the past as a benchmark to determine what makes us happy or sad so that we may develop the threshold in which an outcome appears attractive. So say that the experiences we have had making friends in classes have been terrible, we are less likely to want to develop relationships with people that are in our existing classes. Our past experiences really do shape our thoughts and feelings about developing relationships with people.

Stability = Comparison Level of Alternatives (CLalt)
The second standard that Thibaut and Kelley use to evaluate their outcomes is comparison level of alternatives. Basically, CLalt is determined by "the worst outcome a person will accept and still stay in a relationship" (Griffin, p. 149). Even if a relationship is unhealthy a person might choose to remain in it because it is better than what they perceive the real world to be.

My group also has more information to share on Social Penetration Theory:

Derek Rinehart takes the theory and applies it to his own life.
Cari Porter researches a related article.
Michelle Shafer critiques the theory to determine its validity.

Related Links!

Irwin Altman's Home Page give more information about his research and what he has done in the field of social psychology.

Carmen Appleby from Bowling Green State University can provide more information about the nature of self-disclosure.

Dr. William E. Snell Jr., a professor at Southeast Missouri State, has also performed some interesting research on self-disclosure.

To view even more information on different communication theories besides Social Penetration go to Judith Lee's INCO 234 Home Page.

Another communication theory that gives more insight into how people open up to each other in order to form some sort of relationship is Relational Dialectics Theory by Leslie Baxter and Barbara Montgomery.



Created By: Michelle Shafer
Last Updated: November 18, 1999





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Griffin, E.M. (1997) A First Look at Communication Theory. (pp. 143-152). St. Louis: McGraw-Hill.