Ramifications of revealing private information: A gender gap

The study examined the frequency with which men (N = 126) and women (N = 126) anticipated positive and negative ramifications to disclosure of information in four topic areas: Parental, achievement, sexual, and global. The findings indicate that men predicted more negative ramifications for all topics than women, while women predicted more positive ramifications than men. In terms of topic, men predicted more negative ramifications than women when they were disclosing information about achievement. Overall, it was found that respondents expected more positive than negative ramifications. However, when topic was considered, respondents predicted negative ramifications most frequently for the sexual topic and least frequently for the achievement topic. Implications were discussed in terms of boundary regulation and achievement orientation for men and women.