The Secrets We're Most Likely to Keep

Keeping a secret sometimes requires deliberate acts of deception, like diverting attention midway through a sensitive conversation or striking certain details from a story about what you did last night. But new research suggests that it is a secret's quiet nagging at us, not the act of concealing it, that helps explain why secret keeping is associated with outcomes such as anxiety and poor physical health.

In a series of studies, researchers at Columbia University found that, on average, the more frequently people said their minds wandered to the secrets they kept, the greater the negative impact they reported the secrets having on their well-being and the lower their ratings of life satisfaction. The decline in well-being tied to carrying secrets was in turn associated with lower self-ratings on a physical health survey. What did not seem to matter was how often secrets were actively hidden.

"The more you think about this thing that you're holding back, the more you feel disingenuous and inauthentic," explains psychologist Michael Slepian, who led the investigation. The findings support the idea that "those feelings of inauthenticity lower relationship quality and satisfaction with life," he says. Writing about a heavy secret or discussing it with someone could help, Slepian suggests: "In this day and age, you can reveal your secret anonymously online."

Slepian and colleagues also catalogued the types of secrets kept by hundreds of people—as well as whom they were kept from.

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