Social Penetration Theory

Social Penetration Theory is a scientific theory that explains the role of self-disclosure (the voluntary sharing of personal information with another person) in the process of relationship development and dissolution. Every person goes through different, yet somewhat similar, processes for developing and ending relationships. Although any given person is involved in many different types of relationships, all of your relationships are defined to a great extent by the degree and range of self-disclosure. According to the Social Penetration Theory, the depth (the intimacy of disclosure in a specific area of an individual’s life) and breadth (the range of areas in individual’s life over which disclosure takes place) of penetration determine which category a relationship falls under. Throughout my life I have had many learning experiences with Social Penetration Theory, out of all of these experiences, one of the most memorable and more recent came last year when I began school here at Davis.

Upon first arriving to college, it seemed

After meeting this group of guys at summer orientation, we decided to room together in the dorms for our first year of college. As the Personality Structure/ Onion Model metaphor (layers of beliefs and feelings about self, others and the world; the deeper into the onion the deeper the meaning) goes, the layers of the onion revealed at first were mostly composed of simple demographic and public information like where we were from, what sports we played in high school, and our other hobbies and interests. At first, most of these guys seemed quite similar to me and we seemed to get along pretty well. Being in the same major as the majority of the guys, I would constantly see them in classes and around the dorms and felt that we formed a strong friendship very quickly and they were people that I could