The theory of social penetration is at the basis of every formation of a new relationship. This theory is an interaction between people who slowly learn about each other at first formally and then informally. Social penetration is defined as revealing ones self to others, this process is cautious and slow and some are more cautious then others. When people meet for the first time, they tend to share information, which is general and limits the range of the topics they discuss.
As these people learn about each other and time passes the depth of their disclosure increases thus revealing personal information. The breadth of disclosure increases and the individuals are able to discuss a range of topics. For some people, this takes time, while for some it is quick. Talking more deeply about the theory, the writers have used the onion metaphorically to explain this theory with a greater depth. They have compared the layers of onion and levels on intimacy with each other for a better understanding of how the theory works.
The outer layer being the part of their life, which is, exposed to everyone and the inner most layer being the most private, hardly shared, protected and central to self-image. They say that the very outer layer is the side of that person that is open for anyone to see. It’s who that person is in public and is for the most part accessible to anyone who wishes to see it. The outer layer of the individual includes lots of different details that help to describe who they are, but at the same time it still holds characteristics that are common to almost everyone.
If you peel a layer of the onion and move forward, you start to discover things about the person that they necessarily haven’t shared with everyone but quite a few people. These are the things that are told to some of the people that he/she trusts. Going deeper, there is a layer where a person’s personal values are hidden. Their fears and fantasies, their private information that is known by only the people who have had a significant effect on the person’s life. The last layer is the one, which is counted to be a private domain or self-concept. The things present here are shared with loved one(s).
But, all these layers are not peeled of at once. It takes time to uncover the layers of the onion and not everyone can peel off the layers for others. People tend to limit the people that they trust and in the same way, they limit the information they share with others. It is a gradual process of layer-by-layer withdrawal. The more we spend time with others, the more likely we are to self-disclose ourselves for more intimate though and details of our daily life. By the same token, the communication partner will also develop a deeper relationship.
I would like to give an example of how social penetration theory has made me disclose my self to my bestfriend/girlfriend and also de-penetration occurred over the period of time. I was about 17 when I entered Drexel University as an international student from India. Coming to the United States for the first time, I had a pretty hard time coping up with making friends and getting used to the American college life. It was not exactly the same, as an international student would have expected. Over the course of time, I started meeting a lot of new people and started talking about my major as well as shared my hobbies.
There were a lot of people that liked the same things as I did and were also sharing the same major as me. Slowly, I started making friends and we had a group of about 7 people. With these 7 people, I shared the exploratory affective stage. We would talk about our goals, the teams we liked, would go for lunch and dinner, share our views on classes etc. Sooner, I started getting attracted to the girl who was from the same town as I was and the two of us started seeing each other for coffee and would often discuss our families, our lifestyle and what we specifically liked.
For example, the genres of movies we liked or the countries that we wanted to visit etc. Slowly as we started knowing each other better, we discussed our religious thoughts, spiritual thoughts, how much we believed in God and often talked about our family. We started discussing our past and the problems that were once faced or we faced over the span of our lives. It was time when we knew that we liked each other and we wanted to date each other. Slowly, we were able to judge and know each other better.
We knew what the other one would like, the interests and this was the smooth stage in the relationship. Over this course of time, we shared more information about our family, our social status, views on each other, disliking’s about each other or habits and most importantly what we expected out of each other. Later, as the time passed, we met each other’s parents and got even more closer, until the time that she decided to part ways with me because of my socio-economic status and decision to change my major.
She thought that she was too rich and intelligent for me and thought of bringing an end to the relationship. So, the entire year and a half went from orientation to de-penetration quickly. The main reason talking about my example related to this theory was the explanation of the theory in my own life. Some things are better when experienced and this is one such example. As time passed, we got closer and separated. It was better to understand the theory keeping my own example in mind and to relate whatever I went through at certain stages.
The theorists have defined social exchange in this theory as relationship behavior and stages regulated by both parties’ evaluations of perceived rewards and costs of interaction with each other. According to social penetration theory, a relationship will work out or not work out based on the costbenefit analysis that each person feels they can get out of the relationship. If the person believes that they are going to receive benefits that will ultimately outweigh the costs of exposing more of themselves to someone else then the social penetration theory will start to work.
I think this was the exact same thing that happened in my case and maybe that was the reason of us parting ways. Social Penetration theory has also been called a dialectical process. The main reason for calling it a dialectical process is because it involves managing tensions between the public and private factors of the disclosure of information. We tend to go back and forth with this and ultimately we get an end result, either we achieve social penetration or in some instances we achieve de-penetration.
As proven with the social penetration theory, the exchange of information is reciprocal. Throughout the formation of our friendship, we had engaged in the sharing of information with each other and we had reached that point in our relationship where we seemed to hit a plateau in which personal things are shared and each one of us could predict the emotional reactions of one another. It can clearly be seen that by this point we had achieved social penetration. Hence, I could say I was successful in understanding and achieving my own example of the social penetration theory.