• Liman Man Wai Li, Qilin Chen, Haojie Gao, Wen-Qiao Li, and Kenichi Ito.
• Department of Psychology and Centre for Psychosocial Health, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.
• Int J Psychol. 2021 Feb 1; 56 (1): 129-137.

AbstractPrevious work suggests that the experiences of online and offline self-disclosure are heterogeneous among individuals. Yet little work has been done to identify the moderating role of individual characteristics and pre-existing relationship characteristics on the diverse relational outcomes. The present study using a 7-day diary design examined whether individuals' self-esteem level and relational closeness would moderate the relationships between online and offline self-disclosure to offline friends and two relational outcomes, that is, relationship satisfaction and trust in friendships. The analyses on 686 diary responses from 98 participants revealed that offline self-disclosure generally predicted greater relationship satisfaction and trust in friendships, whereas the role of online self-disclosure was not statistically significant. More importantly, self-esteem moderated the pattern associated with offline self-disclosure but not that with online self-disclosure. Specifically, offline self-disclosure predicted greater benefits to people with lower self-esteem relative to people with higher self-esteem. Moreover, pre-existing relational closeness moderated the relationship between offline self-disclosure and trust in friendships such that casual friendships benefited more from offline self-disclosure than close friendships did. The present study highlights the importance of personal characteristics and relationship characteristics in understanding the heterogeneous relational influence of different communication modes.© 2020 International Union of Psychological Science.

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