Dimensions of Anticipated Reaction in Information Management: Anticipating Responses and Outcomes

Abstract

Many models, theories, and frameworks of information management (e.g., privacy, disclosure, secrets) incorporate the concept of receiver response, both anticipated and actual. Although most if not all information management literature highlights the importance of the response variable, each perspective conceptualizes and/or operationalizes response differently. The lack of consistency across perspectives limits research design, theory testing, and scholars' ability to make comparisons among and across theoretical frameworks, as well as their ability to evaluate research findings within the broader context of information management theory. This project presents a review and synthesis of receiver response within the context of information sharing and decision making, including both immediate responses and longer-term outcomes of sharing the information.

Keywords:

• Response
• Disclosure
• Privacy
• Secrets
• Information Management
• Reasons for Disclosure

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Kathryn Greene and Jeanette M. Dillon for their assistance with this project.

Funding

This research was supported in part by the Center for Family and Demographic Research, Bowling Green State University, which has core funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [R24HD050959].

Notes

[1] Sandra Petronio, Boundaries of Privacy: Dialectics of Disclosure (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002).

[2] Irwin Altman and Dalmas A. Taylor, Social Penetration: The Development of Interpersonal Relationships (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1973).

[3] Petronio, Boundaries of Privacy.

[4] Kathryn Greene, Valerian J. Derlega, and Alicia Mathews, “Self-Disclosure in Personal Relationships,” in The Cambridge Handbook of Personal Relationships, ed. A. L. Vangelisti and D. Perlman (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 409–27.

[5] Kathryn Greene, “An Integrated Model of Health Disclosure Decision-Making,” in The Uncertainty and Information Regulation in Interpersonal Contexts: Theories and Applications, ed. T. D. Afifi and W. A. Afifi (New York: Routledge, 2009), 226–53.

[6] Tamara D. Afifi and Kelly Steuber, “The Cycle of Concealment Model,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 27 (2010): 1019–34.

[7] Tamara D. Afifi and Kelly Steuber, “The Revelation Risk Model (RRM): Factors that Predict the Revelation of Secrets and the Strategies Used to Reveal Them,” Communication Monographs 76 (2009): 144–76.

[8] Stephenie R. Chaudoir and Jeffrey D. Fisher, “The Disclosure Processes Model: Understanding Disclosure Decision Making and Postdisclosure Outcomes among People Living with a Concealable Stigmatized Identity,” Psychological Bulletin 136 (2010): 236–56.

[9] Kathryn Greene et al., “Assessing Health Diagnosis Disclosure Decisions in Relationships: Testing the Disclosure Decision-Making Model,” Health Communication 27 (2012): 356–68.

[10] Afifi and Steuber, “The Cycle of Concealment Model.”

[11] Afifi and Steuber, “The Revelation Risk Model (RRM).”

[12] Greene et al., “Assessing Health Diagnosis Disclosure Decisions in Relationships”; Afifi and Steuber, “The Cycle of Concealment Model”; Chaudoir and Jeffrey D. Fisher, “The Disclosure Processes Model.”

[13] Greene et al., “Assessing Health Diagnosis Disclosure Decisions in Relationships.”

[14] Kathryn Greene and Kate Magsamen-Conrad, “Disclosure Decisions in Existing Relationships Online: Exploring Motivations for CMC Channel Choice,” Interpersonal Relations and Social Patterns in Communication Technologies: Discourse Norms, Language Structures and Cultural Variables, ed. J. R. Park and E. C. Abels (Hershey, PA: Information Science Publishing, 2010), 48–76.

[15] Greene, “An Integrated Model of Health Disclosure Decision-Making”; Kathryn Greene and Sandra L. Faulkner, “Self-Disclosure in Relationships of HIV-Positive African-American Adolescent Females,” Communication Studies 53 (2002): 297–313; Anita L. Vangelisti and John P. Caughlin, “Revealing Family Secrets: The Influence of Topic, Function, and Relationships,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 14 (1997): 679–705.

[16] James Gross and Ross Thompson, “Emotion Regulation: Conceptual Foundations,” in Handbook of Emotion Regulation, ed. J. J. Gross (New York, NY: Guilford Press, 2007), 3–24.

[17] Valerian J. Derlega, Barbara A. Winstead, and Kathryn Greene, “Self-Disclosure and Starting a Close Relationship,” in Handbook of Relationship Beginnings, ed. Susan Sprecher, A. Wenzel, and J. Harvey (New York: Psychology Press, 2008), 153–74.

[18] Alicia Mathews, Valerian Derlega, and Jennifer Morrow, “What is Highly Personal Information and How is it Related to Self-Disclosure Decision-Making? The Perspective of College Students,” Communication Research Reports 23 (2006): 85–92.

[19] See Valerian J. Derlega, Susan Sherburne, and Robin J. Lewis, “Reactions to an HIV-Positive Man: Impact of His Sexual Orientation, Cause of Infection, and Research Participants’ Gender,” AIDS and Behavior 2 (1998): 239–348; Anita E. Kelly and Kelly J. Mckillop, “Consequences of Revealing Personal Secrets,” Psychological Bulletin 120 (1996): 450–65; Afifi and Steuber, “The Cycle of Concealment Model.”

[20] Anita P. Barbee et al., “Helpful and Unhelpful Forms of Social Support for HIV-Positive Individuals,” in The HIV and Social Interaction, ed. V. J. Derlega and A. P. Barbee (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998); Robert B. Hays et al., “Disclosing HIV Seroposivity to Significant Others,” AIDS 7 (1993): 1–7; Kelly and Mckillop, “Consequences of Revealing Personal Secrets.”

[21] Altman and Taylor, Social Penetration.

[22] Petronio, Boundaries of Privacy.

[23] Petronio, Boundaries of Privacy.

[24] Kelly and Mckillop, “Consequences of Revealing Personal Secrets.”

[25] Walid A. Afifi and Laura K. Guerrero, “Motivations Underlying Topic Avoidance in Close Relationships,” in The Balancing the Secrets of Private Disclosures, ed. S. Petronio (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000), 165–79; Tamara D. Afifi et al., “Verbal Avoidance and Dissatisfaction in Intimate Conflict Situations,” Human Communication Research 35 (2009): 357–83.

[26] Afifi and Steuber, “The Revelation Risk Model (RRM).”

[27] Michael Roloff and C. Wright, Uncertainty and Information Regulation in Interpersonal Contexts: Theories and Applications, ed. Tamara D. Afifi and Walid Afifi (New York: Routledge, 2009), 320–40.

[28] Mathews, Derlega, and Morrow, “What Is Highly Personal Information.”

[29] L. Ross, “The Intuitive Psychologist and his Shortcomings: Distortions in the Attribution Process,” in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 10), ed. L. Berkowitz (New York: Academic Press, 1977), 173–220.

[30] Valerian J. Derlega and Barbara A. Winstead, “HIV-Infected Partners’ Attributions for the Disclosure or Nondisclosure of Seropositive Diagnosis to Significant Others,” in Attribution, Communication Behavior, and Close Relationships, ed. V. Manusov and J. H. Harvey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 266–84.

[31] Greene et al., “Assessing Health Diagnosis Disclosure Decisions in Relationships”; Afifi and Steuber, “The Cycle of Concealment Model.”

[32] Valerian J. Derlega et al., “Reasons For and Against Disclosing HIV-Seropositive Test Results to an Intimate Partner: A Functional Perspective,” Balancing the Secrets of Private Disclosures, ed. Sandra Petronio (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2000), 53–69; Derlega and Winstead, “HIV-Infected Partners’ Attributions”; Kelly and Mckillop, “Consequences of Revealing Personal Secrets”; Afifi et al. “Verbal Avoidance and Dissatisfaction.”

[33] Greene, Derlega, and Mathews, “Self-Disclosure in Personal Relationships.”

[34] Greene, Derlega, and Mathews, “Self-Disclosure in Personal Relationships.”

[35] For example, relational turbulence. See Theiss and Solomon's research on how relational uncertainty affects perceptions of irritations.

[36] See for comparison “Self-focused Reasons for and against Disclosure,” in Kelly and Mckillop, “Consequences of Revealing Personal Secrets.”

[37] See for comparison “Other-focused Reasons” noted in Table 4.

[38] Afifi and Steuber, “The Cycle of Concealment Model.”

[39] Kelly and Mckillop, “Consequences of Revealing Personal Secrets.”

[40] For criteria for revealing secrets and functions of secrets, see the work of Vangelisti, Caughlin, and colleagues; for reasons for and against HIV disclosure, see the work of Derlega, Greene, and colleagues; regarding CPM, see the work of Petronio and Colleagues; and for RRM and CCM, see the work of Afifi, Steuber, and colleagues.

[41] Valerian J. Derlega, et al., “Perceived HIV-Related Stigma and HIV Disclosure to Relationship Partners after Finding Out about the Seropositive Diagnosis,” Journal of Health Psychology 7 (2002): 415–32.

[42] See “After Diagnosis: A Guide for Patients and Families,” American Cancer Society, http://www.cancer.org/treatment/understandingyourdiagnosis/afterdiagnosis/after-diagnosis-talking-to-others-about-diagnosis.

[43] Afifi and Steuber, “The Revelation Risk Model (RRM)”; Greene, Derlega, and Mathews, “Self-Disclosure in Personal Relationships”; Greene et al., “Assessing Health Diagnosis Disclosure Decisions in Relationships.”

[44] Afifi and Steuber, “The Revelation Risk Model (RRM)”; Afifi and Steuber, “The Cycle of Concealment Model”; Greene et al., “Assessing Health Diagnosis Disclosure Decisions in Relationships.”

[45] Kathryn Greene et al., “The Brief Disclosure Intervention (BDI): Facilitating African Americans’ Disclosure of HIV,” Journal of Communication 63 (2013): 138–58.

[46] Littlejohn, S. W., Theories of Human Communication. 5th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1996).

Additional information

Funding

Funding: This research was supported in part by the Center for Family and Demographic Research, Bowling Green State University, which has core funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [R24HD050959].