A study of general mental health in relation to self-disclosure, extraversion-introversion and social support

Abstract

The present study was undertaken to investigate (1) the influence of self-disclosure on general mental health i.e., to what extent self-disclosure facilitates or inhibits the development of general mental health; (2) the impact of extraversion-introversion on general mental health i.e., to what extent extraversion-introversion influence the development of general mental health; (3) the effect of social support on general mental health i.e., to what extent social support facilitates or inhibits the development of general mental health. In addition to these main objectives of the present research, the study was also designed to explore, (a) whether or not interactional effect exists between self-disclosure and extraversion-introversion on general mental health, (b) whether or not interactional effect exists between extraversion-introversion and social support, (c) whether or not interactional effect exists between self-disclosure and social support, (d) to determine whether or not interactional effect among all independent variables exists on general mental health. A 3×3×3 factorial design in which two personality variable i.e., self-disclosure and extraversion-introversion, and one social variable i.e., social support each varying three ways was used in the present study. The three values of the personality variable i.e., self-disclosure were (a) high self-disclosure, (b) moderate self-disclosure and (c) low self-disclosure, extraversion-introversion was also divided into three levels like (a) extraverts, (b) ambivalent and (c) introverts. The three values of social support were (a) high social support, (b) moderate social support and (b) low social support. Thus, there were twenty seven groups of subjects namely: high self-disclosee extraverts high social support, high self-disclosee ambivalent high social support, high self-disclosee introverts high social support, high self-disclosee extraverts moderate social support, high self-disclosee ambivalent moderate social support, high self-disclosee