Blackwell Reference Online

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Since the dawn of interpersonal communication research in the early 1970s, communication researchers have been interested in relationship development processes. Theories focused on how strangers develop more personal and intimate alliances with others over time, couples work to maintain relationships, and partners cope when they fall apart or disintegrate. Extensions and applications of these basic theories into work, family, cross-cultural, and mediated arenas followed. Several important relationship development theories , advanced in the 1970s, laid the foundation for the next 30 years. Altman and Taylor's (1973) Social Penetration Theory claimed that relationships develop because people expect the amount and nature of rewards accrued by continuing will exceed the potential costs. Communicators exchange an increasingly broad number of topics, going into more depth on some and staying superficial on others. But as the topics and depth progress from non-intimate areas to more intimate ones, the layers are peeled, like an onion, and the relationship develops. Relational dissolution (i.e., depenetration) follows the same process, but in reverse. Duck's (1973) description of the phases of breaking up was consistent with this approach, but examined satisfaction with the relationship, possible confrontation about complaints, means of dealing with one's social network, and retrospection ... log in or subscribe to read full text