ABSTRACT
Open communication (i.e., disclosure of thoughts, information, and/ or feelings) and avoidance of communication (i.e., deciding not to discuss particular issues and/or withholding some details of particular issues) fascinate scholars across the communication discipline. Scholars have delineated the importance of secrecy, privacy, and discretion for individual and relational well-being (Bochner, 1982; Parks, 1982) and theorized the tensions between and management of openness and closedness (Baxter & Montgomery, 1996; Petronio, 2002). Eisenberg and Witten (1987) proposed that individual, relational, organizational, and environmental contingencies shape the usefulness of open communication in organizations, and research on “the subtle boundaries and conditions of disclosure” (Duggan, 2006, p. 101) is a central issue for future health communication research.
