SOCIAL PENETRATION THEORY IN ​

Javier Ogaz

Submitted in partial fulfillment of COMM 451 Communication Theory Robert R. Mendenhall 10 April 2015

SOCIAL PENETRATION THEORY IN HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER ​

Social penetration theory is one of the most common and key communication theories in the field of communication and it can be used to understand why people intentionally share personal information with others. A great example of how this theory plays out with people of different backgrounds and personalities is CBS' hit comedy "How I Met Your Mother." The show ​ ​ began in 2005 and aired its last episode in 2014. To summarize the show, the main character

() is telling his kids the story of how he met their mother in the year 2030.

Throughout the progression of the show, Ted tells his kids of all the wacky and crazy adventures he had with his , , and . In my opinion, this show was successful because of the character development and I believe social penetration theory explains to us why many fans of the show felt a "closeness" and a type of connection to each of the characters.

"Social psychologists Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylor proposed a social penetration process that explains how relational closeness develops."1 They suggested that "people are like onions" in the sense that there is a multilayered structure of personality. Altman & Taylor say that the outer layers are what the world sees, which are characteristics such as gender, age, occupation, and hobbies. The inner layers are what people don't see and are typically more vulnerable. This includes things such as goals, religious beliefs, fears, and self concept.

Social penetration theory explains "the process of developing deeper intimacy with another person through mutual self­disclosure and other forms of vulnerability."2 In other words, it gives us insight into why people grow close with one another and how this closeness is achieved. The definition given for social penetration theory states that there must be self­disclosure and other forms of vulnerability.3 Self­disclosure is "the voluntary sharing of personal history, preferences, attitudes, feelings, values, secrets,etc., with another person."

Self­disclosure is one of the forms one can be vulnerable, but what are the other forms of vulnerability? There isn't exactly a sure way to tell. One can be vulnerable in many ways, but one aspect of life that leads to vulnerability comes to mind and that is dating.

Dating can make a person vulnerable in many ways. In order to grow close to the person, you eventually tell them your likes, dislikes, goals, dreams, and deep dark secrets. Telling another person your precious personal information leaves you vulnerable to anything they might do. You just have to trust that they will never use that information against you. This is how trust forms, not just in dating, but in any relationship. Dating and relationships, be it friendly or

1 Griffin, Emory A. "Social Penetration Theory of Irwin Altman & Dalmas Taylor." A First ​ Look at Communication Theory. 6th ed. (Boston: McGraw­Hill, 2006), 114 ​ 2 Ibid, 114. ​ 3 Ibid, 114. ​

amorous, is what the show How I Met Your Mother is mostly about, thus making it a perfect ​ ​ example of social penetration theory.

Now that we have a small introduction to social penetration theory, I want to expand on

How I Met Your Mother and give an overview of it. The show is about hopeless romantic Ted ​ Mosby's infinite quest to find the love of his life. The show begins with Ted meeting up with his friend Barney at Maclaren's pub, their usual hangout spot. He is hanging out with Barney and thinking about his life because his two friends, Marshall and Lily, were getting engaged. He looks across the room only to see find himself at who he thinks may be his potential wife. Later in the episode he says "Because that, kids, is the true story of how I met your Aunt Robin."4 ​ Through a way of twists and turns, Ted and Robin become friends, with a few periods of romanticism and awkward break­ups in between. Eventually, Ted moves on from wanting to date Robin and continues the How I Met Your Mother storyline by dating many other women. ​ ​ Ted and his friends are all different and diverse but also very similar. Ted Mosby is an architect who is a hopeless romantic and a little illogical when it comes to love. This is demonstrated in the pilot episode when he tells Robin he thinks he's in love with her on their first date. He is also a guy with a good sense of humor, but also very much emotional baggage such as getting left at the altar in later seasons. He also shares a love for with his best ​ ​ friends Marshall and Barney.

Moving on from Ted's character, I'd like to touch up on his friends beginning with

Marshall. He and Ted met when they were college roommates. In college, it is easy to either become best friends with your roommate or worst enemies. Marshall and Ted clearly become

4 Feature, IMDb. "Is Robin the Mother?" IMDb. (Accessed April 2, 2015) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460649/faq

best friends. Marshall is in a sense a "gentle giant" being the tallest of the group and also the most polite. He attributes his politeness to growing up in . In the beginning of the series, he starts out as a law student and throughout the series progresses to becoming a lawyer and eventually it is revealed in the show that he becomes New York State Supreme Court Judge.

His goofiness is demonstrated by his usual jokes, puns, and a very peculiar stand­up comedy bit about fish and their names. His spouse, Lily Aldrin, is by comparison very different than he is.

Lily is the feisty, short, shopaholic and loud one of the group. Unlike Marshall, she grew up in . Therefore she carries all the stereotypical characteristics of a New Yorker.

However she does have a sweet side since she is a kindergarten teacher. The show portrays her as the "ultimate companion" since she is for the most part very laid back and goes along with

Marshall's wacky plans sometimes.

Lily and Marshall are sweetheart couple of the show. Aside from the fact that she broke up with Marshall for about a year, they have virtually been together since freshman year of college. They are an excellent example of what social penetration theory attempts to explain.

Lily and Marshall have been together for so long that they know everything about each other. It is almost as if they are one person, and at one point in the show it's noted that they even share a toothbrush.

In a marriage, it is necessary to open up and share everything with each other. Well, maybe not a toothbrush, but many experts and married couples will agree that communication is key. Not just in marriage, but in every relationship. Without words, conflicts cannot be resolved.

However there can't be a relationship without trust. Referring back to the "multilayered onion" depiction, one can't gain the trust of a person by penetrating the outermost layer. In order to

really know what that person is like, what they hope for in life, and that which they most fear, one must penetrate deeper to the innermost layers of this onion. Once the inner layers of the onion are reached, the process of gaining closeness and trust begins.

Next up in the batch of main characters we have Barney. Barney grew up without his father and clearly has psychological issues because of it. He is a good looking, young man who is very successful as well as a huge womanizer. The show gives us the understanding that he obscenely rich and constantly uses his money to buy suits or to come up with an elaborate plan or scheme in order to have a one night stand with women. However, nobody really knows what

Barney does for a living as he replies "Pfft! Please." everytime he is asked what he does for a living. Despite his rich, playboy getup, we are made to understand that Barney does indeed have a heart. He eventually falls for a few girls, ultimately marrying Robin. Barney is also a pathological liar. When confronted about this he replies "A lie is just a great story someone ruined with the truth,"5 and "People like being lied to. They just don't like finding out they've been lied to."6 Despite being a liar, Barney vows to never lie to Robin on the day of their wedding. The honesty eventually has them ending in divorce as they are both unhappy.

The last of the main characters is Robin. She is a very career oriented, hardworking and insightful person. Because she is career oriented, she has a bit of commitment issues. She is an anchor for the local cable news channel, Metro News 1. She is constantly trying to get her friends to watch the show she's on, but it rarely works since she's on very early in the morning.

5 Feature, Goodreads. "Quote by Barney Stinson". Goodreads. (Accessed April 2, 2015) ​ http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/540931­a­lie­is­just­a­great­story­that­someone­ruined 6 Feature, TVFanatic. "People like being lied to. They just don't like finding out they…" ​ TVFanatic. April 13, 2010. (Accessed April 2, 2015) http://www.tvfanatic.com/quotes/people­like­being­lied­to­they­just­dont­like­finding­out­they/

Robin is also the groups one of the biggest running gag. For starters, she is Canadian. Because she is Canadian, the group often makes fun of her, particularly Barney. The show encourages this by often making her do something stereotypically Canadian such as using Canadian jargon. The other running gag is the fact that she was a Canadian pop star of the 90's in her teen years as

Robin Sparkles. This comes up when they find a video of her that they originally think is porn, but it turns out to be a video titled "Let's go to the Mall," her first hit as Robin Sparkles.

Throughout the years we see her come up with other songs such as "" and

"P.S. I Love You" as Robin Daggers. Despite all the grief she gets, she still proves to be a good friend to the group as well as a good girlfriend.

It doesn't suffice to talk about what each character is like. We must look into how each of these characters interact with each other. There are so many complex relationships among the group of friends, but I'd like to focus mostly on Ted and Robin. They meet in the pilot episode when Ted looks across the room of the bar and sees her. He then talks to her and they somehow end up at her apartment late at night. Ted then tells her he thinks he's in love with her, which makes Robin instantly reply "What?" Despite that, the whole gang eventually becomes friends with her. Ted and Robin's friendship starts out as something that looks like it might want to be romantic. In the early seasons, they are a perfect example of an "off­and­on couple" meaning they break up and eventually get back together. Towards the later seasons, they stay just friends as they both date other people and never really return to each other until the last episode of the series, which suggests they will get back together but never really shows it. They are a perfect example of how two people can get close. In the dating process, they got to know each other and got to know what each other wanted with their lives. When they sat down and talked about that,

they quickly realized Ted wanted a family and Robin wanted to focus on her career, leading them to realize they had an expiration date and then breaking up. Realizing what is at the very innermost layer of the metaphorical onion is a good way of knowing whether two people are compatible to be together or not. However, since they have reached the point in the relationship to where they are very close, they are able to remain friends even if they are not compatible to date at that point in time. They even move in together and become roommates at one point in the show.

Em Griffin defines the term "depth of penetration" as "the degree of disclosure in a specific area of an individual's life."7 Altman and Taylor state that there are five stages that penetration goes through:

"Orientation stage. Here, we play safe with small talk and simple, harmless clichés like ‘Life’s like that’, following standards of social desirability and norms of appropriateness. Exploratory affective stage. We now start to reveal ourselves, expressing personal attitudes about moderate topics such as government and education. This may not be the whole truth as we are not yet comfortable to lay ourselves bare. We are still feeling our way forward. This is the stage of casual friendship, and many relationships do not go past this stage. Affective stage. Now we start to talk about private and personal matters. We may use personal idioms. Criticism and arguments may arise. There may be intimate touching and kissing at this stage. Stable stage. The relationship now reaches a plateau in which personal things are shared and each can predict the emotional reactions of the other person. Depenetration. When the relationship starts to break down and costs exceed benefits, then there is a withdrawal of disclosure which leads to termination of the relationship."8 ​

Robin and Ted go through these very stages throughout their relationship. At the beginning of the show, they were complete strangers. He saw her at a bar and asked her out on a date.

7 Griffin, 115 ​ 8 Feature, Changing Minds. "Social Penetration Theory." Changing Minds. (Accessed April 2, ​ 2015) http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/social_penetration.htm

This is an example of the orientation stage as they don't know each other but through small talk, they got to know each other a little bit better. When Ted and Robin went on the date, they slowly started to reveal themselves in what is the exploratory affective stage. This includes details such as where they are from, what they do for a living, etc. At this point, they aren't comfortable enough to tell anything major. The third stage is the affective stage, although it didn't really happen with Ted and Robin because of Ted telling Robin he thinks he's in love with her on the first date. This incident leaves them in the exploratory affective stage for quite a while. However as the time flies by, they eventually become close as they share about their day­to­day problems. This is where they enter the affective stage.

Eventually, Ted and Robin realized they had feelings for each other. They hesitate to tell each other at first, but Ted asks her out and she says yes. When they start dating, they go into the stable stage. Robin begins to spend a lot of her time at Ted's apartment so they basically live together. At this point of a relationship, things seem to stabilize and "plateau".

When people begin to date and become a couple, they usually are able to understand each other and how they each feel without actually expressing their problems. The last of the stages is depenetration. This happens when the relationship doesn't really work out and it is completely terminated. However, not all relationships go through this stage. Ted and Robin, despite seeming like the perfect couple, realize that they both want different things at the moment so they break up. Besides the fact that they break up, they decide to stay friends afterwards. Therefore, their relationship doesn't show examples of depenetration.

Although Ted and Robin's relationship isn't exactly like everyone else's, I believe it's an excellent example of social penetration. The other relationships in the show aren't really

examples of this theory as they were all friends at the beginning of the show. However, there is an episode with flashbacks as to how everyone in the gang met, but there aren't as many details to explain social penetration theory as well as Ted and Robin's relationship does.

In conclusion, I think that every storyline of How I Met Your Mother is a perfect ​ ​ example of social penetration theory, especially Ted and Robin's storyline. It includes examples of all but one of the five stages of penetration. This show demonstrates the stages of two people getting to know each other throughout the story of Ted and Robin or other instances when someone becomes friends with someone else in the show. I believe that social penetration theory is one of the most important theories in communication. Not only does it explain how people become close, but it is applicable to everyday life and not just the field of communication.