16/11/2022
Fun Fact: Keeping secrets is a universal phenomenon. Researchers found that approximately 97% of people are keeping a secret at any given time, and the average person is currently keeping around 13 of them (though not all are because of shame or guilt).
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What aren’t you telling us? What are you hiding? Nothing? Ok. Then are you hiding big surprise from someone? Are you pregnant and not telling anyone? Are you buying us a pony for Christmas? No. Darn.
Well, chances are you’re holding onto at least one secret – and you’re more than likely keeping a whole bunch across a handful of different categories. Not all secrets are sinister, and some we’d probably rather people kept to themselves.
Secrets are interesting things, which is why psychologists study them.
The anatomy of a secret
The American Psychological Society (cited below) wrote about the work of some of their members, and it’s fascinating stuff.
First, you may be interested to know that sharing this private information and asking people to keep it from others is burdensome (so maybe you should keep some to yourself). Then again, researchers also found that sharing secrets is a great way to bond with people and show them you trust them.
Dr. Michael Slepian, associate professor of leadership and ethics at Columbia Business School, described his interest in the psychology of secrets:
“For decades, secrecy research focused on the effects of concealment. But I couldn’t find any studies that systematically looked at what secrets people keep, how they keep them or how they experience secrets on a day-to-day basis.” This led him to survey around a thousand people and try to categorize the types of secrets they keep.
Types of secrets
The first step was to define acts of secrecy, which they did broadly, “defining secrecy not just as the moment of actively withholding information, but also having the intention to keep something secret from another person—even when that other person isn’t physically present.”
After categorizing the types of secrets people keep (for example, things related to infidelity, illegal behavior, planned surprises, pregnancy, etc.), he and his colleagues discovered that the things people keep to themselves generally fell into about 38 common categories.
“We all keep the same kinds of secrets,” Slepian told the APA. “About 97% of people have a secret in at least one of those categories, and the average person is currently keeping secrets in 13 of those categories.”
The biggest harm of keeping a secret was a person’s tendency to ruminate on it, which happened far more often with negative secrets. Interestingly, people tend to dwell on things that make them feel ashamed – even more than they ruminate on secrets that make them feel guilty. That’s because shame makes you feel like a bad person and breeds feelings of helplessness or powerlessness.
Divulging secrets
Divulging these previously private things can be a double-edged sword, of course. But talking to people can reduce the shame. Slepian found that “thinking about a secret can create a motivational conflict in which a person’s need to connect with others directly clashes with their desire to keep their secret to themselves.”
After finding 38 categories of secrets among hundreds of people, Slepian’s team also found that “confiding a secret predicted improved well-being, both because the participant received social support and because the act of revealing the secret seemed to minimize the amount of time the person spent thinking about it.”
