Communicative Decisions in Families
Authors: Pett Rudy C. , Scharp Kristina M. , Fan Yueyi 
Published: February 2024

Families represent a central relational unit within society and a formative context of interdependence throughout one’s life. How family members individually and collectively navigate communicative decisions therefore illustrates a process offering implications for each member within a family. Although various forms and contexts of decision-making might emerge, decisions guiding how family members communicate remain inevitable. Thus, particular importance emerges in understanding the processes and considerations that guide communicative decisions in families. Some decision-making processes might remain implicit, but several communication theories and models illuminate explicit considerations guiding family members’ communicative decisions. The first set of theoretical perspectives provides insights regarding communicative decisions relevant in contexts of uncertainty. The theory of motivated information management, for example, suggests that family members must make decisions regarding how they wish to manage a lack of information and any resulting uncertainty. However, those decisions likely remain guided by how family members assess their individual (or collective) ability to obtain the desired information, as well as cope with the outcomes of obtaining new information. Relatedly, uncertainty management theory illustrates the ways that family members experiencing uncertainty likely face decisions regarding if, as well as to what extent, they wish to acquire more information related to the source of uncertainty. Communication often serves as an information-seeking behavior family members decide to either enact or avoid, depending on how interested they are in reducing their uncertainty. A second set of theoretical perspectives illustrates the decisions family members face regarding if (and how) they communicate “private” information, as well as secrets. When managing private information, communication privacy management theory outlines decisions family members likely confront related to privacy ownership, privacy control, and privacy turbulence. In terms of secrets, the revelation risk model explicates considerations guiding if (and how) individuals decide to reveal secrets to their family members. These considerations include assessments of potential risk, perceived communication efficacy, and the relational closeness between the family members. The cycle of concealment model also examines decisions to reveal secrets, but this model suggests that these decisions also consider elements such as family interaction histories and, similarly, the quality of the relationship shared between the family members. A final theoretical perspective illuminates how health contexts introduce unique considerations that might dictate if (and how) family members decide to communicate about health-related information. Specifically, the disclosure decision-making model proposes that these types of communicative decisions remain guided by more unique considerations, such as (a) the type of information to be disclosed, (b) the relationships among the family members, (c) how a family member is likely to respond to the disclosure, (d) perceived disclosure efficacy, and (e) available strategies to disclose the information. Collectively, these six theoretical perspectives provide a multifaceted understanding of the central processes and considerations that guide communicative decisions in families.