Social Penetration Theory: Term Definition

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Theory Overview
Discussion Section
Conclusion
References

Introduction

Social Penetration Theory helps researchers to explain social processes and interaction patterns in society and between individuals. While these qualities make the law-abiding man more social and desirable, they make the social man situated in certain communities. The area of social interaction is well measured off on sociological maps. In reality there are invisible transitions, sections where no arrests are made (Miller and Miller 2004). Only when the massive concentration begins and social appearances are reduced, people focus on interaction and interpersonal relations which affect their life and environment. Impressively squeezed into a narrow space, exchanging stimulating attraction for camouflage, these components of the theory are focuses.

Theory Overview

Social Penetration Theory was developed and introduced by Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylor. These psychologists try to explain and interpret relational closeness between individuals in society. The main pointy of the theory are that (1) people prefer to exchange information about Peripheral items more readily and openly; (2) Self-disclosure is a reciprocal process; (3) the process of penetrating goes fats at the beginning but slows down quickly; (4) depenetration is always a slow process. Also, Altman and Taylor believe that social penetration can be seen as a part of Social Exchange Theory introduced by Thibaut and Kelley (Griffin, 2002).

For Altman and Taylor, self-disclosure is of course a symptom of social interaction, however, on the mind of the individuals who grow up among ruins and neglect self-disclosure is undesirable process. There is a point at which they just give up; they do not care anymore, after having tried to resist social relations in whatever way they can. No wonder that many of social rules, especially those pertaining to the sanctity of property, are weakened. Individuals evaluate relations with others on the basis of rewards and benefits. The theory states that people go through several stages in communication including orientation stage, exploratory affective stage, affective stage, stable stage and depenetration.

For instance, if a person sees relation with a neighbor as satisfactory, he/she will continue them and see them favorably. In contrast, if interaction with a person is unsatisfactory, the communicator will try to avoid this interaction in future. The theory is objective and should be placed on Griffin’s map of theory traditions as it allows researchers to understand inner feelings and psychological mechanisms of social relations (Griffin, 2002). Social life affords an accretion of strength. No wonder that the same device which socially is a help may bring about new social problems when social units clash with groups, or when minor units, families, crowds, or neighborhoods run opposed to the demands of the supreme unit, the state. It is not always easy to settle conflicting codes and loyalties. The theoretical concepts are acknowledged and the state sets its categorical claims aside (Anderson 1995).

The epistemology of the theory is the depth of penetration. In reality, it is difficult to evaluate and assess the depth of penetration and intimacy. In some cases, it is really difficult to separate self-disclosure and openness in relations. In this case, the theory is simplistic paying attention to communication aspects of human interaction but neglecting deep psychological and personal characteristics (Miller and Miller 2004). In terms of ontology, it can be difficult to determine the level of determinism and free will aspects. Thus, this theory reflects free will relations based on theoretical ideas and concepts of psychology and cognitive structures. Social life presupposes interaction.

The contact should therefore be not totally ephemeral or one-sided. For instance, a passer-by who happens to be knocked down in a dark square does not form a unit with the burglar. He may be drunk and barely aware of the aggressor. In this case, interaction will not reflect idea of self-disclosure and oppresses of Social Penetration Theory (Griffin, 2002). In terms of axiology, Social Penetration Theory is more value laden theory than value neutral. It places an individual in social settings influenced by environmental factors and events. Social life and structure are subject to other forces which do not standstill. They are deeply affected by technological innovations, the machine age, the age of birth control, the age of ideologies. Through the medium of nascent and dying units all these basic factors of human development and reversion bear on behavior.

Discussion Section

Social Penetration Theory is an interpretive theory as it helps researchers to explain and analyze communication processes taking into account causes and consequences of human actions (Miller and Miller 2004).

The first Interpretive standard is mew understanding of people. The Social Penetration Theory perfectly meets this criterion and helps to understand and evaluate social relations and new communication patterns, The theory helps researchers to clarify complex communication, universal patterns of symbol usage and permits subjective understanding. For instance, a group comes into existence when at least one other person enters into relations with a given individual. Yet there can be beginnings of group life with the policeman on his regular beat, with the boss, with a teacher or a priest. Imaginary partners and a person’s sincere belief may constitute a social unit, fanciful, it is true, but operative. Following Klaus Krippendorff’s Self-Referential Imperative, it is possible for researcher or a critic to include himself as a constituent of his own construction and test the theory (Griffin, 2002).

Social psychologists forget that the whole origin of social life-propagation, breeding, and survival of the weak-rests on self-disclosure. This same closeness evokes emotional needs and satisfactions, compassion, receptiveness, recognition. For instance, the pity in the blind man is said to be due to his inability to see and to split in other people’s sufferings. By his disability there is put more “space” between the blind individual and his environment and surroundings, because he lacks some of the space-given, sense-transmitted interactive relations. The blind and the deaf men experience this partial isolation, even when they sit near other people (Baumeister and Bratslavsky 1999). This example vividly portray that self-disclosure and intimacy in interaction is bound by environment and personal uniqueness of an individual, so the Social Penetration Theory permits new understanding of people (West and Turner, 2002).

The second Interpretive standard is clarification of values. The Social Penetration Theory meets this standard and allows researchers to determine values and driven forces of the communication and its consequences. In general, social groups require some continuity, intimacy, and emotional content. There are surely social relations between father and son, between two neighbors, two friends. Hate and fear are not absolutely group-preventing when obsessive nearness, in an office, in a neighborhood determines a contact that otherwise would be avoided. Such units, of course, by necessity live on compromises, confidential nonaggression pacts, and methods of cooperation. Yet people may have a bearing on both partners’ social behavior.

The theory allows researchers acknowledge their own values and unmask the ideology behind messages. Much more often researchers think of a plurality of persons when they speak of social units. But the simple collective is not yet a group sociologically. It does not matter that they meet by chance in a certain street or room( Miller and Miller 2004). The Social Penetration Theory meets Krippendorff’s Ethical Imperative which states that a person should grant others that occur in construction the same autonomy he/she practices constructing them. Thus, the issue of equality in interaction and self-disclosure is questionable. Good function seems to depend primarily on structural intactness. If this fiction cannot be upheld and the function of the group shows “knocking” of its machinery, social surgery, which clips the structure, may be more favorable to survival than conservation (Griffin, 2002).

For instance the neighborhood is generally as productive a social device as the institute of family is. In some cases, it becomes a disorganizing locality and comes more and more to the foreground. Researchers think that aggressive society has left some room for essentially cooperative units, families, neighborhoods, and others (Miller and Miller 2004). Social life is arranged in gradations of solidarity: the social group, the marriage grouping, the family, the neighborhood, the community, social classes, and the state. All of these groups, although integrated, develop their own separate, sometimes conflicting values. Self-disclosure and intimacy are apart of the interaction process. In the midst of a broad cooperation they develop their own suspicious ethics and behavior patterns (Baumeister and Bratslavsky 1999).

Sometimes the social unit is outwardly intact but father and mother, one or both, have to be supported by the children. They can be weak-minded, alcoholic, or physically handicapped. The roles of such people are reversed; the weak are called on to provide for the breadwinner. Such parents force themselves on undeveloped and feeble hosts. The conduct of these people teaches the children a very dangerous lesson. In such cases, self-disclosure is impossible or limited by social settings. Exploited, the children grow up to become aggressive themselves. From their experience people acquire a totally wrong image of the world. Long live the man who can live on other less emotionally strong ones. That is just what some forms of law-breaking mean. The increasing tendency to develop social units and subgroups in the struggle for life has not escaped the attention of the individual, who uses the same protective device in his fight against society.

The second principle allows researchers to classify values of people and evaluate them in terms of social and personal relations. For instance, living in constant danger, the individual has even been forced to elaborate units that function more smoothly than legitimate groups (Miller and Miller 2004). The social group requires the most powerful automobiles, the most perfect psychology, the greatest discipline, and the most inviolate moral code. The complex interplay of social group loyalties becomes apparent when, in the natural course of events, an individual passes from one group to another. A woman who marries leaves the family and enters a completely new social grouping, which includes the husband, the children, and perhaps the relatives of her husband. The new social group takes precedence and does not tolerate prior rights (Griffin, 2002).

The third Interpretive standard is Aesthetic appeal. The Social Penetration Theory meets this standard as it is captivating in its content. The well-known association between shortage and poor breeding must therefore be enlarged. Extremely rich individuals are not so numerous that they can be objects of mass observations. But it is possible for people to consider all those relative “millionaires” who cannot easily withstand the insidious attack of sudden success. In this situation, interaction and penetration process creates an authentic appeal.

When the disagreement reached its climax and the husband left the house, this is the situation according to the wife’s report based on economic and social differences of the spouses (Miller and Miller 2004). Among manifold aspects of the family, researchers shall limit attention to such disorders as may tend to bring about delinquency. Using this theory in his analysis, a rhetorical critic can be a real artist, an analyst, audience, or advocate. Very often there is an intact structure. Underneath the preserved formal shell the family is disarranged and disabled. The peace-securing and life-supporting purpose of the social group may be completely done away with. Husband and wife will suffer, and still more will the children be neglected and handicapped (Baumeister and Bratslavsky 1999).

The forth standard is a community of agreement. According to this criterion, a theory must have widespread scrutiny and usage. The Social Penetration Theory does not meet this standard as it is difficult to apply it in all situation and communication patterns occurred between individuals. Interpersonal discord, from the point of view of the social services, leads to four manifestations: infelicity, desertion, nonsupport, and combinations that involve separation. Since desertion is no longer an emotional disorder but a structural disengagement, entailing specific and statistically controllable effects, it is instructive to isolate the factor of mere domestic infelicity. This is the passive and smoldering stage of the conflict. It may come to an end with separation, abandonment, or divorce. It may persevere as a lifelong and uncured condition of unhappiness (Baxter and Braithwaite 20080. The unhinged social group is no formal unity. It cannot be grasped statistically, as widowhood or divorce can. Though, the past history of violent events, suicide, or murder is full of this functional and never-settled disorder. Recent statistics are chiefly satisfied with general categories: physical ailments, affecting disturbances, other and unknown causes, a social group which, when it assumes some volume, deserves the special hatred of the sociologist (Griffin, 2002).

The fifth Interpretive standard is Reform of society. The Social Penetration Theory does perfectly meet this criterion and stimulates cultural assumptions and alternatives for social action. Individuals are beguiled by the obscure anticipation of strange and vast experiences in which they will participate vicariously and which they will like; it is about the same feeling that drives some females into the arms of roués, men who they hope and fear have gone through all the depths of life and treat. What these females do not consider when they marry such men is that the men grow old, and that the more dissipated a life of pleasure they have led, the sooner they grow old (West and Turner 2002). The social penetration theory helps researchers to explain transformations and new social relations within the society.

For instance, when moment arrives when the husband withdraws from active life, and the wife, still passionate, turns her attention to younger people. The situation has been dealt with so often in films that it appears unreal. Yet researchers know from the history of psychology that it is no rare occurrence (Miller and Miller 2004). Each social unit has a specific structure. When this framework is deprived of an essential part, disfunction will be the consequence. This is the rule; there are, though, exceptions. Social units can be split up. What remains are individuals, able to live on by themselves. But social units are supposed to facilitate endurance. A wrecked social group structure will obstruct the struggle for a place in the sun, provided that intact structure did not conceal decay of sound function. Self-disclosure and intimacy inside the family can be restored to individual health by closure; an oversized family can be revived by division into parts that are fit to live. The unbroken social framework of a family unit may be more damaging than the discontinuance of oppressive relations *Griffin, 2002).

Conclusion

The analysis of the social penetration theory shows that it can be classified as the interpretive theory as it meets four out of five criteria established by Griffin. The social relations can be seen as an area of greatest concentration. The theory states that people go through several stages in communication including orientation stage, exploratory affective stage, affective stage, stable stage and depenetration. In culture pattern, social life, both normal and abnormal, the enthusiasm of gambling, drug indulgence, oblivion-giving drinking, are restricted to. People go through five main stages of the penetration. For instance, if a person sees relation with a neighbor as satisfactory, he/she will continue them and see them favorably.

But it is something more than breakdown of well-organized lives. Life has become so automatic, monotonous, and uniform that millions crave for an hour of escape into relaxing and thus revivifying madness. By social traditions of formal introduction, casual aggregations are split into social, that is, closer and more interacting social groups. Much more important, though, are the permanent social groups. In terms of social penetration theory, individuals share information and knowledge as they evolve institutions and rules and replace the uncertainty of voluntary collaboration by compulsives. The interaction is an example of the social unit. Beneath it countless smaller and less stringent enduring social units form and reform. The closeness of these individuals does not mean that behind their rigid structure people do not come and go.

References

Anderson, J. A. (1995). Communication Theory: Epistemological Foundations. The Guilford Press; 1 edition.

Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E. 1999, Passion, Intimacy, and Time: Passionate Love as a Function of Change in Intimacy, Personality and Social Psychology Review 3 (1), 49-62.

Baxter, L.A. and Dawn O. Braithwaite. (2008). Engaging Theories in Interpersonal Communication: Multiple Perspectives. Sage Publications, Inc.

Griffin, E. (2002). A First Look at Communication Theory. McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages; 5 edition.

Miller, K., Miller, K. (2004). Communication Theories: Perspectives, Processes, and Contexts. McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages; 2 edition.

West, R. L., Turner, R. (2002). Introducing Communication Theory: Analysis and Application. McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages; 2 edition.

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