親密友誼中自我揭露與心理安全感對於探索行為的影響之初探

Abstract

友誼為青少年和成年早期重要的社會關係。在求學階段，個體透過同儕間的人際互動結交朋友。在眾多朋友中，個體可能會與幾個特定對象發展出高度親密關係的友誼，會向對方說出個人資訊、分享私密的想法和情緒、尋求支持和安慰。目前已有文獻探討親密和依附兩者的相似性（Reis & Patrick, 1996）。Reis與Shaver（1988）的親密發展歷程模式指出，自我揭露會增進親密關係。根據依附理論，個體從依附對象身上感到心理安全感，作為安全基地以從事探索行為；Feeney與Thrush（2010）進一步指出安全基地的三個特性：可得性、不干預性、和鼓勵。根據文獻回顧，本研究推論高度親密關係的友誼亦包含依附關係，對親密朋友的自我揭露與心理安全感具有正相關，且兩者皆能增加探索行為的傾向。共計有84位大學生（33位男性，51位女性）參與本研究。結果顯示，整體而言，自我揭露與心理安全感呈顯著正相關，且兩者在迴歸分析中皆能顯著解釋探索行為的變異量；加入心理安全感作為預測變項，自我揭露對於探索行為的解釋力不再顯著，意謂心理安全感可作為自我揭露與探索行為之間的中介變項。惟在安全基地的三個特性中，「可得性」的解釋力最強，「不干預性」的解釋力相對較弱。在本研究中，受試者係依據與特定對象的人際互動經驗進行評估，如此更能清楚瞭解自我揭露和心理安全感在高度親密關係友誼中的功能。

Friendship is an important social relation in adolescence and early adulthood. Across various stages of education, one makes friends by virtue of interaction between peers. Among a large number of friends, one could develop intimate friendships with only a few friends, to whom one tells of personal information, shares private thoughts and emotions, or seeks support and comfort. It has been shown that there are similarities between intimacy and attachment (Reis & Patrick, 1996). Intimacy process model (Reis & Shaver, 1988) suggested that self-disclosure could enhance intimacy. According to Bowlby’s attachment theory, individuals can feel sense of security from attachment figures and use it as secure base to engage in exploration behaviors. Feeney and Thrush (2010) further noted the three characteristics of secure base: availability, noninterference, and encouragement. Based on literature reviews, this study infers that an intimate friendship also contains attachment relationship, and therefore self-disclosure to an intimate friend has a positive association with sense of felt security, which would increase the tendency of exploration behaviors. Eighty-four undergraduate students (33 males, 51 females) participated in our study. Results revealed that in overall, self-disclosure was positively correlated with sense of felt security, and both could explain significantly the variation of exploration behaviors in regression analysis. In addition, while regressing exploration behaviors on self-disclosure and sense of felt security, the effect of self-disclosure was no more significant, demonstrating that sense of felt secure could be a mediator between self-disclosure and exploration behaviors. However, among the three characteristics of secure base, “availability” had the most prominent effect, “noninterference” was by contrast the weakest one. Subjects in this study were asked to recall the actual interaction experiences with a specific person, which allows the others a better understanding on the functions of self-disclosure and sense of felt security in intimate friendships.