When is trust not enough? The role of perceived privacy of communication tools in comfort with self-disclosure Nancy E. Frye * , Michele M. Dornisch Long Island University, 720 Northern Blvd., Brookville, NY 11548, USA article info Article history: Available online 14 April 2010 Keywords: Self-disclosure Trust Personality abstract In what circumstances might privacy concerns about new communication tools like instant messaging help predict the degree to which people feel comfortable communicating via these new communication tools? The current study examined whether topic intimacy and perceived privacy predict levels of com- fort with disclosure, and whether these associations are moderated by overall levels of trust and fre- quency of technology use. Participants reported on the degree to which they would feel comfortable discussing each of 32 topics (e.g., ‘‘times when I felt that I was in love”) using 10 different communication tools. Topic and tool interacted, such that the privacy of the communication tool was related to disclosure comfort only for intimate topics. Privacy concerns were more important to less frequent technology users, and topic intimacy mattered most to participants with low levels of trust. Results are discussed in terms of implications for extending models of disclosure to the selection of new communication tools. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction It is virtually a truism that self-disclosure is crucial for personal and relationship well-being. With respect to personal well-being, self-disclosure has been found to be related to lower levels of lone- liness (Chelune, Sultan, & Williams, 1980). With respect to rela- tionship well-being, logically, it is difficult for people to develop relationships when they know little about each other. Empirical findings support this logic. In particular, disclosure has been con- sistently found to be related to interpersonal liking (Collins & Mill- er, 1994), a finding which extends to friendships (Miller, 1990), the parent–child relationship (Papini & Farmer, 1990), as well as mar- ital and other romantic relationships (Hendrick, 1981; Laurenceau, Feldman Barrett, & Pietromonaco, 1998). This is the case both at the between-subjects level as well as at the within-subjects level, with people who disclose more reporting more satisfaction and partners reporting greater feelings of intimacy at times when they engage in higher levels of disclosure (Laurenceau et al., 1998). Traditionally, the study of self-disclosure has focused on the variables of audience and topic. Research in this tradition has sug- gested that each of these contextual factors play a role in disclo- sure. With respect to audience, for instance, research suggests that people are more likely to disclose to audiences for whom they have greater liking (Collins & Miller, 1994) and to whom they feel closer (Dindia, Fitzpatrick, & Kenny, 1997). With respect to topic, research suggests that people are more likely to disclose when they are discussing less intimate topics (Sollie & Fischer, 1985). Such re- search suggests that disclosure is by no means constant; context plays an important role in helping to shape disclosures. With the advent of new technologies (e.g., Internet, text messag- ing, blogs), there is an additional contextual factor that may help shape disclosures. How people disclose information may play just as large of a role as what they disclose and to whom they disclose in predicting the degree to which people are willing to reveal infor- mation. Although people have always had a choice, to some degree, in how they disclose information (e.g., via letter, in-person, or over the phone), in the past few decades the number of options of com- munication media has skyrocketed, as people are more and more likely to turn to cell phones, email, and other new media to keep in touch with friends and family, with university students reporting nearly daily use of email (Imhof, Vollmeyer, & Beierlein, 2007). Although there is a wide body of research concerning people’s dis- closure patterns to strangers via computer-mediated communica- tion versus face-to-face interaction (e.g., Joinson, 2001; Joinson, Woodley, & Ulf-Dietrich, 2004; Tidwell & Walther, 2002) and com- paring patterns of exclusively online versus exclusively offline friendships (e.g., Chan & Cheng, 2004), there is less research concern- ing people’s use of various new communication tools to disclose to friends and family (see Kim, Kim, Park, & Rice, 2007, article 2). The goal of the current study is to help fill this gap by examining what dif- ference, if any, communication tool makes in people’s comfort with disclosure. In light of this goal, the remainder of this introduction is divided into four sections. The first reviews research concerning disclosure via different communication media. The second and third review two possible moderators of disclosure patterns: familiarity 0747-5632/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2010.03.016 * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: Nancy.Frye@liu.edu, nancy.frye@gmail.com (N.E. Frye). Computers in Human Behavior 26 (2010) 1120–1127 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Computers in Human Behavior journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh