When sharing hurts: How and why self-disclosing weakness undermines the task-oriented relationships of higher status disclosers

- We examine status and self-disclosing weakness in task-oriented relationships.
- Higher status coworkers experience a status penalty after self-disclosing weakness.
- This status penalty undermines influence, conflict, and relationship quality.
- Peer status disclosers do not experience any of these negative outcomes.
- Perceived vulnerability explains the negative effects for higher status disclosers.

It is generally believed that self-disclosure has positive effects, particularly for relationships; however, we predict and find negative effects in the context of task-oriented relationships. Across three laboratory experiments, we find that both task-relevant (Study 1) and task-irrelevant (Studies 2 and 3) weakness disclosures, made by a higher (versus peer) status coworker during an interdependent task, negatively affected the receiver's perception of the discloser's status and consequently undermined the discloser's influence, encouraged task conflict, and led to lower relationship quality with the discloser. Peer status disclosers did not trigger these negative responses. We find support for perceived vulnerability as the proposed psychological process (Study 3). Specifically, higher (but not peer) status disclosers experience a status penalty after weakness disclosures because these disclosures signal vulnerability, which violates the expectations people have for higher (but not peer) status coworkers. These findings provide insight into the effects of self-disclosing weakness at work and the ways in which high status employees may inadvertently trigger their own status loss.