| Abstract: | Intercultural and interracial relationships face barriers, tensions, and challenges that are absent from intracultural and intraracial relationships. These challenges provide the impetus for this study to examine the influences of individualism-collectivism and relational intimacy on topics and dimensions of self-disclosure in intercultural/interracial friendships from a social penetration perspective. A total of 252 participants responded to the instruments measuring the constructs of interest. This study found: (1) relational intimacy was positively correlated with all six topics and four out of the five dimensions of self-disclosure; (2) individualism was a significant predictor of the five dimensions of self-disclosure as a set; and (3) one mirrors one's intercultural/interracial friend in all six topics and the positive/negative dimension of self-disclosure. These results suggest that relational intimacy has a greater impact on close intercultural and interracial friendships than cultural variability. |
