An educational psychological perspective on self-disclosure in adolescent interpersonal relationships

Abstract

Adolescents, like all individuals, have a need to belong. Consequently, during the adolescent period, adolescents battle with the establishment and maintenance of meaningful relationships. Most of them, unfortunately, do not succeed to establish and maintain such relationships because of a lack of skills to do so. It appears, therefore, that If adolescents are to enhance their interpersonal relationships so as to enable themselves to self-actualize, they need to be taught interpersonal skills. One of the skills that they should be taught is the self-disclosure. As such, the first part of the literature study was devoted to the discussion of self disclosure. The study of literature revealed that self-disclosure has many aspects, the main ones being the nature of the self-disclosure content, self-discloser target, and concealment. In the second part of the literature study, attention was paid to the nature of interpersonal relationships with special reference to adolescents' relationships. The malysis of interpersonal relationships revealed that the establishment and maintenance, is well as the collapse of interpersonal relationships follow a particular pattern. Data concerning perceptions, beliefs and attitudes held by adolescents towards selflish closure in their interpersonal relationships was gathered by means of various Techniques. Parents' perceptions, beliefs and attitudes towards their adolescent children's perceptions, beliefs and attitudes towards self-disclosure in interpersonal relationships were also assessed. The results of the empirical study revealed that adolescents hold selfdefeating perceptions, beliefs and attitudes that make it difficult for them to handle selflisclosure in ways that ought to enhance their interpersonal relationships so as to enable themselves to self-actualize. These perceptions, beliefs and attitudes may not change easily as their parents, the most important component of the adolescents' significant others, seem to be modelling self-defeating perceptions, beliefs and attitudes towards self-disclosure. Lastly, a few guidelines to assist adolescents to handle self-disclosure in ways that ought to enhance their interpersonal relationships so as to enable themselves to self-actualize were given.