Disclosure Expectancy Scale (DExS)

Abstract

The Disclosure Expectancy Scale (DExS), also designated in psychometric literature as the Disclosure Expectancy Scale – Civilian Version, is a 33-item self-report psychometric instrument engineered to evaluate trauma survivors’ anticipatory cognitive evaluations regarding the potential positive and negative ramifications of disclosing traumatic memories. Grounded in social-cognitive processing theory and empirical models of interpersonal social reactions to trauma (e.g., Ullman, 2011), the DExS systematically indexes the subjective expected utility of sharing emotionally distressing events. Structurally, the instrument initiates with two evaluative descriptive items assessing historical disclosure frequency and the perceived utility of prior disclosures, followed by 33 core Likert-type items partitioned into two correlated latent factors: Negative Disclosure Expectancies (capturing anticipations of social rejection, stigmatization, emotional collapse, and interpersonal burden) and Positive Disclosure Expectancies (capturing anticipated emotional relief, validation, social connection, and cognitive reorganization). Psychometric evaluation across trauma-exposed cohorts confirms robust structural validity via confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), demonstrating excellent model fit for the correlated two-factor architecture (CFI = .954, TLI = .951, SRMR = .065). Internal consistency reliability is high across both subscales, yielding McDonald’s omega coefficients of ω = .94 for positive expectancies and ω = .93 for negative expectancies. Construct validity is demonstrated through convergent associations with posttraumatic stress cognitions, perceived social support, and actual disclosure patterns, as well as distinct discriminant validity against general social anxiety and impression management. The DExS provides clinicians and clinical researchers with an empirically derived measurement tool for diagnosing interpersonal disclosure hesitation, tracking trauma-focused psychotherapy readiness, and identifying cognitive targets in posttraumatic recovery.

Keywords

Traumatic Experiences, Disclosure, Negative Expectations, Positive Expectations, Self-Disclosure, Trauma Measures, Social Reactions, Posttraumatic Cognitions, Social Support, Avoidance Behavior, Interpersonal Trauma, Psychometrics

Authors

The Disclosure Expectancy Scale was developed and psychometrically validated by a collaborative team of clinical psychologists and trauma researchers specializing in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and interpersonal recovery processes:

• Joshua D. Clapp, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, USA. (ORCID: 0000-0003-2897-5363; Email: [email protected])
• Matt J. Gray, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, USA.
• Brett T. Litz, Ph.D. — VA Boston Healthcare System and Department of Psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA. (ORCID: 0000-0002-0479-8887)
• Ariel J. Lang, Ph.D., MPH — Center of Excellence for Stress and Mental Health (CESAMH), VA San Diego Healthcare System, and Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
• Alexandria F. Sowers, M.S. — Department of Psychology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, USA.

Purpose

The fundamental objective of the Disclosure Expectancy Scale (DExS) is to measure the nuanced individual differences in cognitive outcome expectancies that dictate whether a trauma survivor will seek or avoid interpersonal disclosure. Decades of clinical trauma literature emphasize that interpersonal self-disclosure constitutes a double-edged sword: under supportive conditions, verbalizing traumatic events facilitates emotional habituation, cognitive reprocessing, and relational intimacy; however, negative social reactions such as victim-blaming, disbelief, or emotional abandonment can significantly compound posttraumatic symptomatology and induce secondary victimization.

From an applied clinical perspective, trauma survivors routinely engage in implicit cognitive cost-benefit analyses before revealing distressing memories to romantic partners, friends, family members, or mental healthcare professionals. When an individual anticipates that revealing their trauma will lead to ostracism, pity, or devastating emotional dysregulation, avoidance strategies are enacted. These avoidance behaviors prevent corrective emotional experiences, hinder the access to social support, and frequently undermine engagement in evidence-based trauma-focused interventions (such as Prolonged Exposure or Cognitive Processing Therapy). The DExS addresses a long-standing gap in psychological assessment by moving beyond simple behavioral counts of disclosure frequency, capturing instead the prospective cognitive appraisals that govern disclosure behavior.

In empirical research settings, the DExS allows investigators to delineate the mechanisms linking exposure to adverse events with long-term psychopathology or posttraumatic growth. By quantifying distinct expectation dimensions, the scale aids in identifying pre-treatment ambivalence, evaluating the impact of public stigma on marginalized trauma survivor groups, and examining how dynamic shifts in disclosure expectancies mediate therapeutic gains across the post-trauma recovery trajectory.

Psychological Construct

The DExS evaluates the psychological construct of trauma disclosure outcome expectancy, defined within an expectancy-value framework as an individual’s subjective probability estimation that specific interpersonal, emotional, or functional consequences will occur if they disclose their traumatic memories. The instrument operationalizes this construct across two overarching primary domains, each encapsulating distinct theoretical facets:

1. Negative Disclosure Expectancies

Negative expectancies reflect anticipations of interpersonal harm, intrapsychic vulnerability, or relational deterioration subsequent to sharing traumatic memories. Within the 33 items, this latent factor is characterized by three core psychological dimensions:

• Anticipated Interpersonal Rejection and Social Judgment: Appraisals that confidants will stigmatize, blame, dismiss, or hold the trauma against the survivor (e.g., believing others will think less of them, blame them for the event, label them as weak, or minimize their subjective suffering).
• Anticipated Emotional Dysregulation and Catastrophic Vulnerability: The belief that verbalizing the traumatic memory will trigger an unmanageable wave of affect, causing the individual to feel exposed, broken, or completely unglued without achieving corrective resolution.
• Interpersonal Burden and Relational Erosion: Concerns that sharing the details of horror or violation will overwhelm, distress, or burden the listener, or compromise confidential boundaries, ultimately leading to relationship dissolution or social estrangement.

2. Positive Disclosure Expectancies

Positive expectancies represent anticipations that disclosing the trauma will yield therapeutic, relational, and intrapsychic benefits. This latent factor spans three conceptual dimensions:

• Catharsis, Emotional Relief, and Pain Reduction: The anticipation that vocalizing emotional memories will release internal tension, reduce emotional distress, take a weight off the chest, and initiate psychological healing.
• Interpersonal Validation and Support Mobilization: Expectations that listeners will respond with empathy, reassurance, practical assistance, and understanding, thereby reinforcing interpersonal connection and reducing alienation.
• Cognitive Reorganization and Meaning-Making: The belief that discussing the experience will clarify confusing memories, restore perspective, and allow the survivor to inspire or assist others who have endured parallel adversities.

Theoretical Framework

The architecture of the DExS is grounded in the intersection of three major psychological paradigms: Social-Cognitive Processing Theory, Interpersonal Models of Social Reactions to Trauma, and Expectancy-Value Formulations of Human Motivation.

Social-Cognitive Processing Theory

As formulated by Lepore (1996) and expanded across cognitive psychology, trauma recovery requires the cognitive assimilation or accommodation of distressing information into existing mental schemas. Emotional disclosure provides the expressive platform through which intrusive cognitions and affective memories are integrated. However, Lepore’s model posits that an individual’s cognitive processing is either facilitated or constrained by their immediate social environment. When survivors anticipate hostile, unsupportive, or invalidating social environments (social constraints), cognitive processing is thwarted, leading to deliberate cognitive avoidance, rumination, and heightened intrusion symptoms.

Empirical Paradigms of Social Reactions to Disclosure

Complementing cognitive formulations, Ullman’s (2011) extensive programmatic research on social reactions demonstrates that the actual interpersonal responses received following trauma disclosure directly influence physical and psychological health. Unsupportive responses (blame, disbelief, minimization, distraction) reliably predict exacerbated PTSD symptomatology, whereas supportive responses buffer against distress. The DExS translates these historical, retrospective social reactions into a proactive, prospective cognitive model: prior social interactions shape a survivor’s mental heuristic regarding future disclosures, establishing durable outcome expectancies that dictate future approach-avoidance coping behaviors.

Expectancy-Value Theory and Instrumental Learning

Stemming from foundational work by Vroom and modern social-cognitive formulations (e.g., Bandura), behavior is viewed as a function of the subjective value of an outcome and the subjective probability that a given behavioral act will produce that outcome. If a trauma survivor values emotional healing but evaluates the subjective likelihood of social rejection, humiliation, or breach of confidentiality as near certainty, the expected utility of disclosure becomes negative. Consequently, behavioral silence (inhibition) is selected as an instrumental strategy to avoid social punishment, aligning with Pennebaker’s paradigm of psychosomatic emotional inhibition.

Validity

The psychometric properties of the DExS have been rigorously examined, with empirical investigations establishing strong construct, convergent, and discriminant validity across diverse trauma-exposed cohorts.

Convergent Validity

In the original validation study by Clapp et al. (2023), convergent validity was confirmed through moderate-to-strong statistically significant correlations between the DExS subscales and established clinical measures:

• Negative Disclosure Expectancies demonstrated strong positive associations with maladaptive posttraumatic cognitions as measured by the Posttraumatic Cognitions Inventory (PTCI), particularly subscales measuring negative cognitions about the self and world. Furthermore, negative expectancies exhibited significant inverse correlations with perceived social support (Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support; MSPSS) and strong positive correlations with explicit reluctance to engage primary social support networks.
• Positive Disclosure Expectancies correlated significantly with historical disclosure behavior. Specifically, individuals harboring higher positive expectancies reported a higher frequency of past disclosure on the initial descriptive item of the DExS ($z = 4.21, p < .001$), confirming that optimistic outcome expectancies align with actual approach behaviors in social settings.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was established by evaluating associations with constructs conceptually distinct from trauma-specific disclosure expectancies:

• Negative disclosure expectancies demonstrated weak correlations with general trait emotional expressivity, baseline social anxiety disorder symptomatology, and impression management scales (e.g., the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale), verifying that the DExS does not merely reflect generalized social inhibition or socially desirable responding.
• Positive disclosure expectancies exhibited clean discrimination across personality dimensions, sharing modest shared variance with general positive affectivity ($r = .30, 95% \text{ CI } [.18, .42]$), indicating that the scale captures trauma-specific instrumental expectations rather than diffuse optimistic disposition.

Reliability

The DExS displays outstanding internal consistency across both research and clinical samples of trauma-exposed individuals. In the foundational validation studies conducted by Clapp et al. (2023), reliability was evaluated using contemporary psychometric indices that overcome the known limitations of Cronbach’s alpha under conditions of varying factor loadings:

• McDonald’s Omega Total (ω): Internal consistency estimates were exceptional, yielding $\omega = .94$ for the Positive Disclosure Expectancies subscale and $\omega = .93$ for the Negative Disclosure Expectancies subscale.
• Cronbach’s Alpha (α): Consistent with omega estimates, traditional internal consistency coefficients across both subscales uniformly exceeded the recommended .90 psychometric benchmark for clinical decision-making.
• Item-Total Correlations: Corrected item-total correlations across the inventory remained well above the conservative threshold of .40, demonstrating high item homogeneity within their respective latent dimensions.

These reliability metrics demonstrate minimal measurement error, ensuring that the instrument is suitable for both idiographic clinical assessment and cross-sectional or longitudinal group-level structural equation modeling.

Factor Analysis

The internal dimensionality of the DExS was established through rigorous structural equation modeling, transitioning from initial exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) across independent trauma-exposed samples.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) Fit

The hypothesized correlated two-factor latent structure (comprising separate, interrelated Negative and Positive Expectancy dimensions) was evaluated using robust maximum likelihood estimation. As reported by Clapp et al. (2023), the correlated two-factor model demonstrated an outstanding fit to empirical data:

• Chi-Square Goodness-of-Fit: $chi^2(494) = 1,257.9, p < .001$
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): $.954$ (exceeding the standard $.95$ benchmark for close fit)
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): $.951$ (exceeding the standard $.95$ benchmark)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): $.065$ (well below the $.08$ threshold indicative of good model fit)

Alternative structural configurations, including a single-factor unidimensional model and an orthogonal (uncorrelated) two-factor model, exhibited significantly deteriorated fit indices, confirming that while positive and negative expectancies are inversely related, they represent distinct, non-redundant cognitive systems that must be assessed simultaneously.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Disclosure Expectancy Scale (DExS); also referenced as the Disclosure Expectancy Scale – Civilian Version.
• Test Type: Original psychometric self-report questionnaire / inventory.
• Structure:
  • Descriptive Baseline Items: 2 preliminary contextual items assessing past trauma disclosure frequency (Item A: 1 = Never to 5 = Very often) and historical disclosure helpfulness/utility (Item B: 1 = Not at all helpful to 5 = Extremely helpful).
  • Core Expectancy Items: 33 standardized items evaluating anticipated outcomes upon future disclosure.
• Response Scale (Core Items): 5-point Likert scale (1 = Extremely unlikely, 2 = Very unlikely, 3 = Moderately likely, 4 = Very likely, 5 = Extremely likely).
• Subscale Composition:
  • Negative Disclosure Expectancies: Items capturing anticipated social rejection, blame, loss of control, stigmatization, and interpersonal burden.
  • Positive Disclosure Expectancies: Items capturing anticipated catharsis, validation, relief, social connection, and emotional healing.
• Scoring Protocol: Total subscale scores for Negative and Positive Disclosure Expectancies are derived by computing the mean of the items comprising each subscale, which is subsequently multiplied by a factor of 10. This yields a standardized scaled range of 10 to 50 for each domain. The ten-fold multiplier was deliberately introduced by the authors to extend the numerical variance and facilitate intuitive comparisons in clinical environments.
• Administration Time: Approximately 7 to 10 minutes.
• Target Population: Adults (18 years and older) who have experienced traumatic or severely stressful life events.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Test Year: 2023.

Permissions & Licensing: The Disclosure Expectancy Scale (DExS) is an open-access psychometric instrument for academic research, educational, and clinical assessment purposes. No commercial licensing fee is required for non-commercial scientific applications. Clinicians and researchers interested in utilizing, translating, or implementing the civilian or military versions in large-scale protocols should cite the primary validation paper (Clapp et al., 2023) and may contact the corresponding author, Dr. Joshua D. Clapp, via the Department of Psychology at the University of Wyoming ([email protected]).

References

• Clapp, J. D., Gray, M. J., Litz, B. T., Lang, A. J., & Sowers, A. F. (2023). Development and validation of the Disclosure Expectancy Scale. Assessment, 30(6), 1969–1984. https://doi.org/10.1177/10731911221128947
• Lepore, S. J. (1996). Social constraints on cognitive processing of traumatic events: Social and psychological impacts on survivors of intimate violence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(5), 996–1006. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.70.5.996
• Pennebaker, J. W. (1997). Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process. Psychological Science, 8(3), 162–166. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1997.tb00403.x
• Ullman, S. E. (2011). Talking about sexual assault: Society’s response to survivors. American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022424

Items of the Scale