The conversations we seek to avoid

Sun, Katherine Qianwen; Slepian, Michael L.

doi:10.1016/j.obhdp.2020.03.002

Cited by 20 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 82 publications

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“…There are a variety of behaviors that a person can enact to conceal a secret during a conversation that are not inhibitive in nature. For example, to try and steer a conversation away from a secret, one could try and change the topic of conversation (Sun & Slepian, 2020). When asked a question about something one would rather keep secret, a skilled conversationalist can simply provide an answer to another question, albeit a related one (Rogers et al, 2017), or ask a question of their own (Bitterly & Schweitzer, 2020).…”

Section: N Alterationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When asked a question about something one would rather keep secret, a skilled conversationalist can simply provide an answer to another question, albeit a related one (Rogers et al, 2017), or ask a question of their own (Bitterly & Schweitzer, 2020). Another action one can take to keep a secret is simply to exit the conversation (Sun & Slepian, 2020), or explicitly decline to answer a question (John et al, 2016). Thus, aside from inhibitive behaviors there are several ways in which people can alter their behavior to keep a secret (see Baum & Critcher, 2020).…”

Section: N Alterationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To take another example, at the Thanksgiving table, someone might almost make a political comment relevant to current events, but then think better of it and bite their tongue in order to avoid the debate that might emerge from the comment. Even if one’s political opinions are well known (i.e., not secret), the comment here would be inhibited not out of secrecy, but rather from wanting to avoid steering the conversation into politics (Sun & Slepian, 2020). People may choose to avoid a conversation topic or inhibit speech for reasons other than secrecy (e.g., politeness, political correctness, fear of seeming prejudiced; e.g., Brown & Levinson, 1987; Richeson & Trawalter, 2005), and the same monitoring processes are engaged in these other social monitoring contexts (e.g., Bodenhausen et al, 2009; Marshburn & Knowles, 2018); thus secrecy cannot be reduced to such conversational inhibitive behaviors.…”

Section: A Secrecy As An Intentionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A process model of having and keeping secrets.

Slepian¹

2022

Psychological Review

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Secrecy is a common and consequential human experience, and yet the literature lacks an integrative theoretical model that captures this broad experience. Whereas initial research focused on concealment (an action a person may take to keep a secret), recent literature documents the broader experience of having a secret. For instance, even if a secret is not being concealed in the moment, one's mind can still wander to thoughts of the secret with consequences for well-being. Integrating several disparate literatures, the present work introduces a new model of secrecy. Rather than define secrecy as an action (active concealment), the model defines secrecy as an intention to keep information unknown by one or more others. Like any other intention, secrecy increases sensitivity to internal or external cues related to the intention. Critically, secret-relevant thoughts are cued in one of two broad contexts: (a) during a social interaction that calls for concealment, and (b) the situations outside of those social interactions, where concealment is not required. Having a secret come to mind in these two very different situations evokes a set of distinct processes and outcomes. Concealment (enacting one's secrecy intention) predicts monitoring, expressive inhibition, and alteration, which consumes regulatory resources and may result in lower interaction quality. Mind-wandering to the secret (when concealment is not required) involves passively thinking about the content of the secret. Engagement with these thoughts may lead to repetitive thinking and rumination, reflection on how one feels about the secret, efforts to cope, or specific plans for how to handle the secret. The model brings together a number of literatures with implications for secrecy, identity concealment, relationships, mind-wandering, coping, health and well-being.

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Section: N Alterationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: N Alterationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A Secrecy As An Intentionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A process model of having and keeping secrets.

Slepian¹

2022

Psychological Review

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“…There currently is no consensus on how to conduct multilevel mediation nor how one should test indirect effects when the unit of the first path (i.e., an unstandardized regression coefficient from a Gaussian model due to a continuous outcome) differs from the unit of the second path (i.e., a log-likelihood value from a binomial model due to a binary outcome). We used a formula for calculating indirect effects that addresses both issues (Iacobucci, 2012; e.g., Sun & Slepian, 2020). Each path coefficient was divided by its standard error, and we multiplied the resulting z-values; this product is then divided by the pooled standard error (i.e., the square root of the sum of the two squared z values and one), yielding the Zmediation coefficient, of which its statistical significance can be tested by a z test.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Morality, punishment, and revealing other people’s secrets.

Salerno¹,

Slepian²

2022

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

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Nine studies represent the first investigation into when and why people reveal other people's secrets. Although people keep their own immoral secrets to avoid being punished, we propose that people will be motivated to reveal others' secrets to punish them for immoral acts. Experimental and correlational methods converge on the finding that people are more likely to reveal secrets that violate their own moral values. Participants were more willing to reveal immoral secrets as a form of punishment, and this was explained by feelings of moral outrage. Using hypothetical scenarios (Studies 1, 3-6), two controversial events in the news (hackers leaking citizens' private information; Study 2a-2b), and participants' behavioral choices to keep or reveal thousands of diverse secrets that they learned in their everyday lives (Studies 7-8), we present the first glimpse into when, how often, and one explanation for why people reveal others' secrets. We found that theories of self-disclosure do not generalize to others' secrets: Across diverse methodologies, including real decisions to reveal others' secrets in everyday life, people reveal others' secrets as punishment in response to moral outrage elicited from others' secrets.

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“…According to impression management theory, people have a fundamental desire to project and maintain a positive self-image to other humans (Tedeschi 2013). When self-disclosure can lead to negative impressions (i.e., social judgment concerns), people avoid sharing such information with other people (Sun and Slepian 2020). Because AI is often perceived as not having its mind, emotion, and the capability to understand meanings associated with human behavior (Gray, Gray, and Wegner 2007; Kim and Duhachek 2020), people may be less concerned about negative social judgment resulting from the disclosure of sensitive information to an AI (vs. a human) agent.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do You Mind if I Ask You a Personal Question? How AI Service Agents Alter Consumer Self-Disclosure

Kim

Jiang

Duhachek

et al. 2022

Journal of Service Research

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The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has grown rapidly in the service industry and AI’s emotional capabilities have become an important feature for interacting with customers. The current research examines personal disclosures that occur during consumer interactions with AI and humans in service settings. We found that consumers’ lay beliefs about AI (i.e., a perceived lack of social judgment capability) lead to enhanced disclosure of sensitive personal information to AI (vs. humans). We identify boundaries for this effect such that consumers prefer disclosure to humans over AI in (i) contexts where social support (rather than social judgment) is expected and (ii) contexts where sensitive information will be curated by the agent for social dissemination. In addition, we reveal underlying psychological processes such that the motivation to avoid negative social judgment favors disclosing to AI whereas seeking emotional support favors disclosing to humans. Moreover, we reveal that adding humanlike factors to AI can increase consumer fear of social judgment (reducing disclosure in contexts of social risk) while simultaneously increasing perceived AI capacity for empathy (increasing disclosure in contexts of social support). Taken together, these findings provide theoretical and practical insights into tradeoffs between utilizing AI versus human agents in service contexts.

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The conversations we seek to avoid

Cited by 20 publications

References 82 publications

A process model of having and keeping secrets.

A process model of having and keeping secrets.

Morality, punishment, and revealing other people’s secrets.

Do You Mind if I Ask You a Personal Question? How AI Service Agents Alter Consumer Self-Disclosure

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