February 2020
Article
Current Opinion in Psychology

The Many Minds Problem: Disclosure in Dyadic vs. Group Conversation

By: Gus Cooney, Adam M. Mastroianni, Nicole Abi-Esber and Alison Wood Brooks

Format:Print

Abstract

What causes people to disclose their preferences or withhold them? Declare their love for each other or keep it a secret? Gossip with a coworker or bite one’s tongue? We argue that to understand disclosure, we need to understand a critical and often overlooked aspect of human conversation: group size. Increasing the number of people in a conversation creates systematic challenges for speakers and listeners, a phenomenon we call the many minds problem. Here, we review the substantial implications that group size is likely to have on how much people disclose, what they disclose, and how they feel about it.

Keywords

Disclosure; Interpersonal Communication; Behavior

Citation

Cooney, Gus, Adam M. Mastroianni, Nicole Abi-Esber, and Alison Wood Brooks. "The Many Minds Problem: Disclosure in Dyadic vs. Group Conversation." Special Issue on Privacy and Disclosure, Online and in Social Interactions edited by L. John, D. Tamir, M. Slepian. Current Opinion in Psychology 31 (February 2020): 22–27.