Dion McCullum, CTP Blog #2

I like to decribe myself as a social butterfly. I'm that friend you can take to your family function and won't have to babysit. I'll mingle, get around, and join in on conversations. You'll look up and I'll be cleaning the kitchen with your grandma. For some people it's hard to be thrown into a surrounding with new people. The question that then arises is does self disclosure and the climate affect the way we interact with people? This is a question that can be better understood with the interpersonal communication theory social penetration. This theory helps you to understand the level of intamacy and comfort individuals may experience in person to person interactions.

Last year my cousin got married and she had a bridal shower of ten women. It was composed of co workers, cousins, old friends and in laws. My cousin had the ideal of doing monthly meetings with the bridal party to help us warm up to one another being that we would be working closely together for the next year. For the first meeting my cousin hosted a ladies night at her home. The evening started off with the normal formalities and greetings. My cousin put on some upbeat music, passed around wine and we began to play games. The first game along with the wine loosened the group up. Before long we were dancing eating and planning our next gathering. As we talked, we began to notice that we had similarities in our lives in more than one way. A few of us were mothers, students, workers, had the same work professions and many more. 

The personal experience I just described, touches on the key points in the social penetration theory. That personality is conceived as a multi layered onion with public self on the outer layer and private self at the core. Also that closeness is achieved through reciprocal self disclosure, that is both broad and deep. Many of the bridal members came to the meeting as dutiful thing to the bride and not to make friends with a new group of women.  The social penetration theory helped make sense of why some people come into sitautions shielded and a tad stand offish. This theory is a perfext sub category for interpersonal communication. After all interpersonal communication is a process of exchange where this is desire and motivation to get to know other people. The main takeaway in the peronal experience was the way the womens self disclosure and the climate of the room helped solidify the unity among each other. Self disclosure is revealing personal information about yourself that someone doesn't know about you. The climate of the room is the tone of everyone's attutude. 

Self disclosure and room climate may seem like a small thing to a giant but it can make or break any social gathering. Who wants to go to an event an really socialize about work? I believe a warm atmosphere and self disclosure are meant as good socializing and network tools. Use them to help bring yourself out of your comfort zone and meet new people.