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Suppressing secrecy through metacognitive ease: cognitive fluency encourages self-disclosure
Adam L Alter1, Daniel M Oppenheimer
1Marketing Department, Stern School of Business, New York University, New York, NY 10012, USA. aalter@stern.nyu.edu
Psychological Science
|October 23, 2009
Summary
Metacognitive ease, or fluency, influences self-disclosure. Increased ease promotes more personal information sharing, while difficulty can lead to reduced disclosure due to risk-related thoughts and emotions.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Social Psychology
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Understanding self-disclosure patterns is crucial for both practical and theoretical reasons.
- Existing research indicates inconsistent self-disclosure strategies, leading to oversharing or undersharing information.
- A need exists to identify a general cue predicting these disclosure patterns.
Purpose of the Study:
- To identify a domain-general cue that predicts self-disclosure patterns.
- To investigate the role of metacognitive ease (fluency) in self-disclosure.
- To explore the relationship between disfluency, risk perception, and comfort with self-disclosure.
Main Methods:
- Conducted tightly controlled laboratory studies (Studies 1a, 1b, 3) manipulating metacognitive ease.
- Performed an ecologically valid online field study (Study 4) to assess real-world disclosure.
- Utilized studies (Studies 2, 3) to examine the influence of disfluency on risk-related thoughts and emotions.
Main Results:
- Metacognitive ease (fluency) was found to promote greater self-disclosure across all study types.
- Disfluency was associated with priming thoughts and emotions related to risk.
- Individuals experiencing disfluency reported less comfort with self-disclosure.
Conclusions:
- Metacognitive ease serves as a domain-general cue predicting self-disclosure tendencies.
- Disfluency may reduce self-disclosure by evoking risk-related psychological states.
- Findings have implications for psychological theory and clinical practice regarding information sharing.
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