Social Penetration Theory Paper

1001 Words3 Pages

The social penetration works when both sides proceed in the relationship with a "gradual and orderly fashion from superficial to intimate levels of exchange" (Williams, 2014). For instance, a college student chooses to live on campus and decides to make friend with his neighbor. They are both freshmen and new to the university. Thus, those college students can predict to build a friendship in the future and become bestie. In contrast, some people are quiet and shy to make friends, they will avoid talking to strangers. Someone is eating by themselves in the dining hall, another colleague shows up and wants to sit with him. They slowly start talking and find no common among them leading selflessly available to the conversation That will be the …show more content…

The penetration method is no longer applicable, so the social penetration theory does not work. As explained by Bylund & Cameron Social Penetration Theory is an recognized and familiar explanation of how intimacy cultivates in friendships and romantic relationships but it has many critics (Bylund & Cameron, 2012): Petronio thinks that it is simplistic to equate self-disclosure with relational closeness and also challenges the theorists' view of disclosure boundaries as being fixed and increasingly less permeable (Bylund & Cameron, 2012). She questions if a complex blend of advantages and disadvantages can be reliably reduced to a single index? Are people so consistently selfish that they always opt to act strictly in their own best interests? (Bylund & Cameron, 2012)

Face-to-Face Communication Example
In the interpersonal communication, relations, …show more content…

Annie, an inactive social media user, who uses only Facebook. She lives in Indonesia. In November 2013, Annie met JA through Facebook, who is familiar with Twitter, Skype, Linkedln. JA is a structural engineer at a big private company in Liverpool. They started the conversation around weather and local time. At this stage, they sometimes talk about their daily activities, plans for the next day. Also, Annie and JA figured a suitable time chart to communicate easily because of the different time zone between UK and Indonesia. Annie was surprised when she received most private information from JA. He is a widower and does not have any children. His wife has died from cancer and he still loved her so much. However, JA needs to move on to overcome his sadness, so he tried to socialize and make new friends. A few days later, their conversation and JA's interaction has occurred intensively. He exposed that he loves Annie and ask her to be his wife even though she was already married. Annie only wished to be a friend, she needed more data up to the penetration as in the social penetration theory, she thought this process was supposed to end soon. JA kept continued texting his foreign Indonesian friend. Thinking that JA's profile picture was attractive, Annie would fall in love with him if she was single because he also was touching and

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