Keeping secrets isn’t always a bad thing

Keeping secrets is generally thought of as quite a negative thing. Some research we've covered, for example, has found that secrets can leave us feeling literally weighed down, while other work has shown that even children understand why secrets can be damaging when handled badly. 

But there are times when keeping secrets can be positive, argues a team writing in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition. In their new paper, Michael Slepian of Columbia University and his colleagues look at the "bright side" of keeping secrets, and find that keeping positive information hush-hush can actually be a source of energy. 

In the first study, participants were shown a list of common pieces of good news — such as someone getting good health news, or completing a meaningful task — and were asked to indicate which they currently held a secret about, and which they did not. Some participants were then asked to report their feelings of energy, positive affect, and intent to share their secret with others, while others did the same with non-secrets. 

Those who thought about their secret good news reported feeling more energised than those thinking about non-secret good news, whether or not they had any intention of sharing (though intention to share was also energising in and of itself). A second study found that keeping a secret due to external reasons — because a partner was busy with work meetings, for example — was fatiguing, while keeping a secret because of internal reasons, such as wanting to surprise someone, was energising, demonstrating that different motivations for keeping a secret produce varying outcomes. 

The next study compared positive secrets to other kinds of secrets. Participants were asked to recall a current secret — either an unspecified secret, a positive one, or a negative one. They then indicated whether or not the secret was internally motivated (that they were keeping it for themselves) or externally (they were keeping it because of external pressures). Finally, they indicated how happy, joyful, delighted, and cheerful they felt about their secret. 

As you may expect, not only did people feel good about their positive secrets, but people were more likely to keep these secrets because they wanted to, rather than the situation demanding it. It is this motivation, the team suggests, that makes positive secrets more energising; a subsequent study supported this idea, and found that 78.4% of positive secrets were autonomously kept.

The team's analyses suggested that this sample also felt positive secrets were more energising, likely because of this internal motivation to keep them. Thus, the ability to determine when a secret is to be shared seems to be a highly salient factor in how positive and energising it is experienced as. 

The final study sought to explore additional mechanisms behind why positive secrets are so energising. This time, participants were randomly assigned to one of four different tasks; to think of (1) a positive secret they held but were unwilling to tell their partner about, (2) something positive and non-secret they would tell their partner about, (3) a secret that was neither positive nor negative, or (4) a non-secret that was neither positive nor negative. 

This sample again rated positive secrets as more energising than neutral secrets, and reported that they had more intention to reveal them than secrets that felt neither positive nor negative. They also intended to reveal positive non-secrets sooner than neutral non-secret information, though they felt less urgent about doing so than with positive secrets.  

This work focuses on US-based participants, so is limited in what it might suggest about how other populations handle secrets. The authors argue that previous research on secrets are "broadly generalisable", but that looking more closely at other cultures could be "a valuable direction for future research."

So, contrary to popular beliefs about the weight of keeping a secret, the results of this research suggest that holding a positive secret can actually have quite beneficial effects. Whether it's a proposal, a potential promotion, or a surprise party, secrets can have positive value, so choose the ones you hold wisely!

Read the paper in full: https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000352