AO3 - Hyper-Personal Model of Self-Disclosure

• A limitation of the hyper personal model of self-disclosure in virtual relationships in social media was carried out by Ruppal et al. They carried out a meta-analysis of 25 studies that compared self-disclosure in FtF and virtual interactions. They found that self-report studies showed that the frequency, breadth and depth of self-disclosures were all greater in FtF relationships than virtual relationships. This contradicts the hyper personal model’s view that virtual relationships lead to deeper self-disclosure, limiting virtual relationships in social media.
• However, much of the research into virtual relationships is conducted using self-report methods (questionnaires and interviews) which are prone to social desirability bias, where participants may have lied about how much they self-disclose in a virtual relationship to present themselves in a better light, so they don’t appear like they have disclosed too much to people they have never met. This limits the internal validity of the research and the extent it can be used to contradict the hyper-personal model of self-disclosure in virtual relationships.