People Keep Secrets Because They Overestimate Harsh Judgments
Research suggests that people tend to exaggerate how critically they will be viewed if they reveal negative information about themselves to others
Keeping certain secrets can weigh on people and have an adverse effect on one’s well-being. People are nonetheless often reluctant to reveal negative information about themselves. Sometimes people keep details such as a past misstep or an embarrassing desire from even their closest loved ones.
This form of secrecy partly reflects worries about consequences for one’s reputation or relationships. But our data suggest that these fears are systematically miscalibrated: people likely expect harsher judgment than they will in fact receive, should they open up.
In research recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, my colleagues (behavioral scientists Mike Kardas of Oklahoma State University’s Spears School of Business and Nick Epley of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business) and I document people’s mistaken beliefs about such interactions. We also investigate what people misunderstand about what these disclosures really reveal. In a series of studies involving more than 2,500 participants, potential secret-revealers anticipated that they would be judged more negatively by recipients of their secret than they were judged in actuality.
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In one experiment, for example, we asked people to get to know one another through a conversation. Pairs of participants answered and discussed relatively intimate questions with each other, such as their favorite memories, what they dream about doing in the future, and so on. We instructed one…
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