Taylor's Social Penetration Theory

Every human being will seek relationship partners within their life to satisfy the social need, and it is a driving force in our life. There are reports stating that the quality of the life are determined by the amount of quality interpersonal relationships that are developed within an individual’s life (Campbell, 1980). In the psychology field, any individual that develops good relationships are prone to live longer with less physical and psychological illness, thus maintaining a better satisfaction in their everyday life (Duck, 1981). Within every relationship, there will be stages that it will go through where it will start, develops, and finally sustains or end. Going through this stages, there exist theories which can further explain the …show more content…
In 1973, two social psychologist named Irwin Altman and Dalmus Taylor have developed this theory to explain the process which develop through relationships. It proposes that it is based on the breadth, depth and frequency of communications between two individuals. A model that they used to relate to this theory is the onion model which signifies the layer of the onion as stages of disclosure of one self in a relationship. The core of the onion resembles the core of the true-self of a person which is rarely shown even in a relationship that has been long established. This stages resembles who we are either as a friend, acquaintances, family, lovers, and more. This is explained in the example explained in previous …show more content…
Again, this types of relationship exists with nonverbal cues, and often text based. The theory explains that the relationships created through media has high potential to succeed like the traditional relationships. Even so, this form of relationships will require more time to develop due to the lack of time consistency. For instance, one may reply messages with each other simultaneously while both is online. However, when both are not online, it will hinder the communication where it may reduce the interest of the communication due to the different timing of replies between each other. Relationship through online media also may create conflict through time as both individual in the relationship will face the interpretation stages. Whatever disclosed online may not represent one true self, and create a misconception. For example, a person may post online about being active in social works, fun and energetic person. But in real life, the person is very introvert and does not mingle much with people. What they post online are only what they want people to perceive them, and not entirely their true self. This will cause the other person in the relationship to perceive only what they see online, and not hat actually is in real