The experience of secrecy.

Abstract

The concept of secrecy calls to mind a dyadic interaction: one person hiding a secret from another during a conversation or social interaction. The current work, however, demonstrates that this aspect of secrecy is rather rare. Taking a broader view of secrecy as the intent to conceal information, which only sometimes necessitates concealment, yields a new psychology of secrecy. Ten studies demonstrate the secrets people have, what it is like to have a secret, and what about secrecy is related to lower well-being. We demonstrate that people catch themselves spontaneously thinking about their secrets-they mind-wander to them-far more frequently than they encounter social situations that require active concealment of those secrets. Moreover, independent of concealment frequency, the frequency of mind-wandering to secrets predicts lower well-being (whereas the converse was not the case). We explore the diversity of secrets people have and the harmful effects of spontaneously thinking about those secrets in both recall tasks and in longitudinal designs, analyzing more than 13,000 secrets across our participant samples, with outcomes for relationship satisfaction, authenticity, well-being, and physical health. These results demonstrate that secrecy can be studied by having people think about their secrets, and have implications for designing interventions to help people cope with secrecy. (PsycINFO Database Record

I Can't Get You Out of My Head: The Influence of Secrecy on Consumers’ Self‐Brand Connections

“…In general, this level of prevalence is consistent with a series of studies by Slepian et al. (), who found, using the same MTurk sample frame, that approximately 96% of participants currently had at least one secret, approximately 50% of those secrets were related to preferences, and 45% to relationships.…”

“…Multiple suppression attempts followed by repeated thought intrusions result in a cyclical pattern known as obsessive preoccupation (Wegner, Schneider, Carter, & White, ). According to extant literature on secrecy, obsessive preoccupation is more akin to the self‐regulation process involved in keeping a secret (Muraven, Tice, & Baumeister, ; Slepian, Camp, & Masicampo, ) than the mind‐wandering process associated with having a secret (Slepian et al., ).…”

“…Secrecy is “an intention to conceal information from one or more individuals” (Slepian, Chun, & Mason, , p. 2) and includes having a secret, the decision to withhold information (Slepian et al., ), and keeping a secret, the decision to intentionally prevent others from knowing truthful information (Critcher & Ferguson, ; Lane & Wegner, ), with important cognitive differences associated with each (Slepian et al., ). Secrecy does not include attempting to instill false information such as through deception (Lane & Wegner, ).…”

“…In the consumer domain, because of the potential ethical issues associated with manipulating secrecy (Slepian et al., ; Wirtz & Kum, ), research has generally been limited to methodologies employing scenarios (Argo, White, & Dahl, ; Liu & Keng, ; Sengupta, Dahl, & Gorn, ), gaming (Argo & Shiv, ), and/or role‐playing (Andrade & Ho, ; Moran & Schweitzer, ). As a result, much of this research focuses on the intention to keep a secret, examined as a dependent variable.…”

Affective processes as mediators of links between close relationships and physical health

“…Furthermore, experiences of joy, contentment, and gratitude can promote relational well‐being by increasing trust and solidifying bonds (Campos, Schoebi, Gonzaga, Gable & Keltner, ; Kubacka, Finkenauer, Rusbult, & Keijsers, ). In contrast, relationship experiences such as resentment, secrecy, and conflict can lead to worry, hostility, and other forms of negative affect (Slepian, Chun, & Mason, ; Kiecolt‐Glaser et al, ).…”