Abstract
The cumulative influences of crowded settings, frenetically paced social life, and increasingly popular open-space design have made a sense of personal privacy progressively more difficult to achieve in contemporary society. A vital research question for the environmental psychologist concerns the extent to which social accommodation may be a psychological correlate of this reduced sense of privacy. An opportunity to investigate this issue in a particular setting emerged when we were approached by a counseling agency where, due to the constraints of restricted space, counselors were forced to operate in shared space in contrast to a private counseling room. Two questions were posed by the agency: (1) Would reduced privacy in the counseling setting adversely affect client self-disclosure? (2) If so, might an inexpensive environmental solution, such as the placement of a desk or bookcase as a partial obstacle, increase self-disclosure?
The research discussed in this chapter was conducted in collaboration with Karl A. Slaikeu.
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© 1978 Plenum Press, New York
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Holahan, C.J. (1978). Invasion of Privacy and Self-Disclosure in a Counseling Setting. In: Environment and Behavior. The Plenum Social Ecology Series. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-2430-0_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-2430-0_6
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