The study examined the frequency with which men (N = 126) and women (N = 126) anticipated positive and negative ramifications to disclosure of information in four topic areas: Parental, achievement, sexual, and global. The findings indicate that men predicted more negative ramifications for all topics than women, while women predicted more positive ramifications than men. In terms of topic, men predicted more negative ramifications than women when they were disclosing information about achievement. Overall, it was found that respondents expected more positive than negative ramifications. However, when topic was considered, respondents predicted negative ramifications most frequently for the sexual topic and least frequently for the achievement topic. Implications were discussed in terms of boundary regulation and achievement orientation for men and women.Why do men and women differ in their disclosive behavior? Research long has supported the notion that women tend to disclose more frequently than men (e.g., Highlen & Gillis, 1978; Jourard, 1971). Yet, the rationale for this apparent gender difference has received little attention other than to attribute the reason broadly to socialization. The argument states that women are socialized to be open, empathic, and revealing, whereas, men are taught to be more concealing, less expressive, and unemotional. Implicit in this explanation is the assumption that men and women use the same criteria for disclosure, but that men tend to exercise a higher threshold and to reveal less about themselves than do women.An alternative proposal may be that men and women are socialized in a very specific way. That is, men and women are taught to use different criteria in deciding whether to disclose private information. For women, it may be that they are taught differential criteria, which are met more easily than those used by men. Petronio, Martin, and Littlefield (1984) present an example; they found that women primarily use receiver characteristics as a prerequisite condition for disclosure, which once met, facilitates frequent openness. Thus, men and women seem to be regulating the flow of private information through the use of different criteria, which gives impetus for examining gender differences for other salient factors used to judge willingness to disclose.In order to enhance the premise that men and women use differential criteria, basic assumptions about the nature of disclosive behavior must be clarified. Altman (1975) and Derlega and Chaikin (1977) propose a scheme to study disclosure that is useful in extending this premise through utilizing the concepts of privacy and interpersonal boundary regulation. These authors suggest that individuals implement an "interpersonal bound-
Drs. Petronio and Martin are Assistant Professors of Speech-Communication at
