What is helpful about all these forms of revelation is, you know, sometimes the hardest part is just admitting to yourself this thing happened. But what's even more helpful than just, you know, releasing your secret. And so the efor is observing how another person responds to it, and that's why conversation with another person is often much better.
Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today's episode is sponsored by Unlikely Collaborators. Their mission is to entangle the stories that hold us back as individuals, communities, nations, and humanity at large, using the Perception Box lens. They do this through storytelling, experiences, impact investments, and scientific research. Unlikely
Collaborators the only way forward is inward. Later on in this episode, I'll talk a lot more about the Perception box and how it relates to this episode, But right now, let me tell you about today's guest. Today, we welcome Michael Slepian too the show. Michael is the Sanford CE Bernstein and co Associate Professor of Leadership and Ethics at Columbia University. A recipient of the Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science, He's the leading expert on
the psychology of secrets. He's authored more than fifty articles on secrecy, truth and deception. Michael's research has been covered by The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, BBC, The Wall Street Journal, and more. He's the author of the Secret Life of Secrets. In this episode, I talked to Michael Slepian about the psychology of secrets. Everyone has secrets that they keep from others, but how does this affect our relationships and well being? According to Michael, maintaining privacy
is not the most burdensome aspect. Carrying a secret all by ourselves is what weighs us down. Michael and I explore the different categories of secrets, and we talk about when to reveal the deepest parts of ourselves and who to reveal them to. We also touch on the topics of personality, morality, trauma, developmental psychology, and communication. This was a really fun and enlightening chat on a topic that is not really talked about that much, and there's really
not a lot in the psychological literature about this. So I really appreciate Michael for studying this topic and for teaching us all about the hidden world of secrets. So, without further ado I'll bring you. Michael Slepian, Well, I really enjoyed your new book, The Secret of Secrets, How our inner world shape well being, relationships, and who we are. I learned a lot about secrets in this book, like
a lot of nuances that didn't even know existed. Would you start off by telling Orion's a little bit about your family's bombshell secret? And is that what got you started and really wanting to study this topic.
So in twenty thirteen, I had been studying secrecy for about a year, so it was brand new research at the time, and I was in fact on interview at Columbia for the position that I have now.
And on that day, I'm.
Spending the whole day showcasing this new research on secrecy. And at the end of that night, when I'm actually still out with folks, I get a call from my dad a miscall, and I get a second misscall, and I'm starting to get worried something really tragic has happened. And what turns out to be the case is that my dad on the phone says, I have to tell
you something. I'm not biologically able to have children. He was telling me that he wasn't my biological father and that this was a secret that they had planned to keep from me forever. And of course that's that's really surprising information. But I really quickly accepted that new reality, that idea that well, you know, whether or not I'm genetically related to my dad, it doesn't make a difference.
He's still my dad, my really good friends, I'm not genetically related to that's fine, and so I kind of accepted it really quickly. The reality as shocking as it was, but it was the secret keeping that was even more surprising. That why was the secret kept from me? And you know who else knew? It turned out my entire family, apart from me and my younger brother, had known the whole time.
Wow, that's that's yeah. I imagine that really affected you. Did you ever meet your who your genetic father is?
No? I, yeah, I you know, that's something that I'm not interested in, at least not at this moment.
But yeah, fair enough, fair enough. So you started studying this topic, well you had been studying at that time, and then you've been studying it for the past ten years. Would you say, is like one of the most surprising findings you found about secrets that you really wouldn't been able to predict going into it.
Yeah, and that's pretty much where this research started to My very early studies in secrecy were suggesting that part of the burden of a secret is just simply thinking about a secret.
And so in my.
Earliest studies, I had people think about a secret and looked at whether they felt a sense of burden in that moment. And when I started presenting that research to people, some people we really, wait, a minute, how is this secrecy. You're just having someone think about a secret. That's not secrecy. You have to have someone to hide a secret. To study secrecy, you have to have someone in a conversation hiding from the other person in the room.
And what turns out to be what was.
Surprising at first is that actually is a very marginal form of secrecy is and it's pretty rare that we have to conceal our secrets, and when we do, we're really prepared for those moments for the most part, and concealing secrets turns out to be the easy part. The surprising thing is that it's all the other moments when our secrets hurt us the most. That was certainly surprising. In the beginning, and so it's something I've been exploring for years now.
I really want to further discuss throughout this today. You know what the deep practical implications of that are. I should have started off with the first question is what is a secret? You know? Because you look at it as something that you look as an intention? Is that right?
Yeah?
So I define secrecy as the intention to withhold information back from more and more people. And so there's plenty of things that other people don't know about us, and not all of those things are secrets. If the reason other people don't know about this thing about you because you're intentionally withholding it, then that would be a secret, and you could still talk about it with other people. But as long as you're intending to keep it from one person, I would call it a secret.
What is it about the way humans are wired? Where I guess my question is how do the secrets evolve? You know? Is it like something that plays off some genetically evolved personality traits?
Like?
Where is it? Where did it come from? When once we got the language, you know, who was the first one who told the secret? And then other humans were like, oh, that's fun.
So it turns out you can actually see some evidence that chimpanzees can conceal objects and actions from other chimpanzees, and so we're not the only ones who can keep secrets.
You're right.
Language changes things, of course, too, But essentially, our ability to keep secrets is an outcome of being able to really confidently think about other minds as well as our own, and to recognize that something in our head is not necessarily.
In others' heads.
And once you have a good understanding of that, you can start competently keeping secrets. And so children will develop this skill throughout early childhood.
Yeah, that's very pH right. Being able to have some perspective taking of some sort seems to be required to be able to tell a secret, because you can't guess, you can't tell secret to yourself, Like you can't keep a secret, I should say, you can't keep a secret from yourself, can you. That's actually really an interesting question.
Yeah. Someone posts that question once to me not long ago, and I was like, well, let me think about that, and then they came up with a bunch of great examples. People who are having a child who don't want to know the sex of that child can keep that secret from themselves by not getting the information. Things like that, things where you could you could ass the information if you chose to you, but you've chosen not to.
That's true. Yeah, that's why I wanted to think about it a little bit more. I was like, wait a minute, Actually, I shouldn't be so quick to say it's not possible. I guess it's different than I was trying to think in my head. Is that different than deceiving yourself? I guess it is.
Yeah. Yeah.
I think where a deception is distinct from secrecy is there's plenty of ways to keep a secret.
That don't involve lying.
Line of course, is a way to keep a secret to you, I would suggest a risky way.
Yeah. So you distinguish between secrecy and privacy. What is the difference between the two.
So, privacy is a general reflection of how much comfort you need or how close someone needs to be to you for you to reveal something sensitive. So someone who's really private needs someone to be really close to talk about more intimate details. But that's still different from specifically intending to withhold information from other people. So some examples of things that might be private that might seem like secret issues around money tend not to talk about out
a concern of politeness. That's why you don't talk about it. That might be privacy rather than the specific intent to withhold something some financial decision back from other people. Sex is another example of something we tend not to talk about with others that must work close with them. But again that's different from specifically wanting some specific sexual experience to not be known by others.
How many secret does the average person hold at one time? And how would one even figure something like that out?
So I can give you a partial answer to that question, where one way to get there is to first understand what are the common secrets people keep? And we asked a couple thousand people what's the secret you're currently keeping right now? And from those responses created this list of thirty eight categories of common secrets. And this list actually is really comprehensive because if someone just says what is the secret they're keeping, ninety two percent of the time
it fits one of the items on the list. Ninety seven percent of people have at least one of the secrets from that list, and the average person at any given moment is keeping thirteen secrets from that list.
Of thirty eight.
Oh humans, you know, in some ways that number is an underestimate because that's looking at how many different kinds of secrets people have, and so they have thirteen different kinds of secrets. On average, you might have multiple secrets of the same category.
Oh my gosh. Okay, so I read that research from because I just said the average numbers thirty. But that's thirteen kinds. That's increb Wow. Can you give me some of your favorite categories? I mean, like I want, I would love for you to run down the list of all of them, but we don't have time for that, I guess. But can you what are some of the most salacious for our listeners?
Most salacious?
Well, this isn't very silicious, but I find it quite interesting and it's actually a really common secret. The secret that people have that they least commonly talk about is what we call extra relational thoughts. You're in a relationship with one person and having some kind of romantic thoughts about another person, and this is a common experience. This is something we commonly don't talk about. Other common secrets include lies we've told, secret ambitions. Family secrets is a
big one. Violations of others trust of course in finelity and cheating and so on.
Yeah. Yeah, so I'm a personality researcher psychologist, so this is I have lots of like questions relating to individual differences. What have you found in your research is the intersection of personality traits and secret keeping? Have you looked at the Big Five? That sort of thing?
And so the Big Five shows some interesting and reliable relationships with how many secrets people keep, and so some are very intuitive. For example, introverted people have more secrets. Actroverted people have fewer secrets. Another one that's more intuitive is that the emotionally stable people have fewer secrets. More neurotic people have more secrets. The one I find very
interesting is conscientiousness. The conscientious have more secrets. That sort of carefulness and diligence even goes as far as holding information.
That's really interesting. Yeah, oh, what did you go through all the five? What about I guess openness? Did you say?
Openness, openness, and agreeableness don't associate with the number.
Of secrets people keep.
Really, so a complication is that they these traits are the reliability reliably related to having experiences that people commonly keep secret. So, for example, open people are more likely to have these experiences that kind of push the bound trees, but they're not more likely to keep them secret. And then agreeable people less agreeable people are also more likely to find themselves in these sort of complicated situations, but
it's not related to keeping them more secret. For example, extroversion is related to getting these situations more, but keeping fewer of them secret.
Can you see that one more time?
Extroverted people do find themselves more in these situations that people commonly keep secret, but they keep fewer of them secret.
They keep fear of them secret. Wow, that is so cool. How does secret relate to gossip the gossip drive? I read some really interesting papers in the evolution of gossip and the functions that it serves. Do they both serve similar functions.
So they do map on to some of the motivations we see in terms of keeping secrets and sharing secrets. And so one reason to gossip is just that it's interesting, a way to learn things, and it's a way to bond over sort of juicy information. Another reason of gossip is you want to harm the reputation of someone who's a bad actor. And so this comes to be careful who you should really know who you reveal your secrets to.
You If you reveal a secret to someone who's totally scandalized by what you're telling them, who finds what you're telling them to be morally objectionable, they're more likely to tell a third party that secret as a form of punishment. And so one reason to gossip that's sort of related to what we're talking about is you want to sort of punish in moral behavior of others.
This is not this is not necessarily positive psychology, is it.
But also I don't want to sell that our bess edge. Most of the time, confiding leads to good outcomes for you and the person you're confiding to, and that often strengthens the relationships. So there's a lot of good. It's mostly good that comes from your secrets. You just want to choose your person carefully.
So that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, and that so that is that can be placed. Who saved it? Now that can be they can be within the positive psychology high quality relationships framework. High quality h but that's also big in the business world. Right. Jane Dudden's work on high quality relationships, right, and trust is such a big one for high quality relationships. So yeah, maybe, like yes, Telly,
secrets can really increase your chance of trust. And also Abraham Maslow, who I talk a lot about in his writings, he had written about self actualizing self actualized lovers tell lots of secrets to each other, that it really He mentioned that in one of his books in like the Sixties Always Stuck with Me, Yeah, with something sexy about about two lovers telling a secret to each other.
Yeah.
I mean, I think when you reveal a secret to someone who's in a very long committed relationship, I think some people expect that that will then be passed on to the partner unless you specifically say otherwise.
Yeah, exactly. Today's podcast is sponsored by Unlikely Collaborators. Their mission is to entangle the stories that hold us back as individuals, communities, nations, and humanity at large using the perception box lens. They do this through storytelling, experiences, impact investments, and scientific research. Today's conversation with Michael really illustrates the
importance of expanding the walls of our perception box. The perception box is the invisible mental box that we all live inside, and it can seriously hinder our ability to understand one another and to understand ourselves. In this episode, Michael goes deep into the psychology of secrets and shows the impact holding various forms of secrets can have on
our lives and the lives of others. From a perception box perspective, the shame that can come from holding a secret can cause the biggest contraction of our perception box. If you're holding a secret, you are essentially telling yourself the story that you believe others are going to judge you for the things you intentionally are withholding from people.
Maybe you feel like a bad person because of the secret. However, virtually every time I told would a loved one a secret that I thought I would have to feel shame over, I actually received sympathy and even often a me too. These moments are so connecting and authentic, and my perception box usually feels more expanded than ever. To find out more about unlikely collaborators and the perception box, go to
Unlikely Collaborators dot com. Let's unpack a little more about where it develops in childhood, especially in you know, adolescents teenage years. Maybe there's a peak, is there, like a do you have a chart of when people tell more secrets than not that throughout the lifespan, can you kind of and I'm asking a lot of questions at once, just unpack it all.
So certainly, by age three, children will try to keep secrets, not very effectively. They'll do things like saying they didn't eat any cookies except having cookie crumbs on their lips and things like that. But they get a little bit older, they start understanding, they have a much better understanding of the things that are in their head that are not necessarily in other sense, and a better understanding of how
to keep those things secret. So, for example, in their earlier years they might blame a ghost for breaking a vase, whereas in their later years they might blame the cat. So they start getting better at keeping secrets. And for the most part, children keeping secrets is not really a problem. You know, maybe they're getting into less trouble, so there's you know, we're talking about less serious issues in the beginning.
Where secrecy starts becoming harmful is adolescence. And there's the sort of healthy form of privacy that teens will develop and seek, and parents should allow their teenagers to develop that sphere of privacy, that's not a problem.
But when teenagers.
Start keeping things like worries and struggles and shames secret, that's when the problems can begin. When they're sort of too worried about saying the wrong thing instead of getting the head that they need. That's when we see secrecy hurting teenagers, and it's the same way secrets hurt adults.
That makes a lot of sense. Well, what can we do to combat that in adolescents? How can we increate put that somewhere in our education.
You want to somehow send the message that it's okay to hold things private. But if there's if somebody is being harmed, whether it's another person or you, that's not the kind of thing you should keep entirely to yourself. That's something you really should talk to someone else about. So sort of helping them understand what's a healthy way of having privacy and when is it time to come to someone with a secret.
Well, we have a lot of time here today, so I wanted to read the whole list of all the secret categories. The categories are not secret, but these are categories of secretness. You know what I'm saying. People know what I'm saying, extra relational thoughts is the highest prevalence, and this is an order of the percentage of people with this experience from most populous to these papas extra
relational thoughts, sexual behavior, emotional infidelity, personal story. Now, okay, what's personal story?
That's kind of like a catch all category. Do you have some specific story that you keep secret that didn't fit one of the other categories?
Gotcha, thank you? Counteronormative okay, kit.
What's that something that you feel is charunter to norms, you know, whether that's picking your nose or something more significant that you find to be unusual. You know, for some people that's like it's an adult who really likes watching kids shows or whatever.
Gotcha? Theft? Wow, that theft is eye up there, Oh, theft.
So it's important this is theft in the most broadly construed way. So for example, one time, when I was staying over at a friends and I realized I needed socks and I didn't have any socks. I took my friend's socks, and you know, I didn't ask first, and.
I don't know if I gave them back either.
Any kind of taking without asking, it doesn't have to be like serious theft.
Than sexual infidelity. Ambition, that's a very interesting one. People hiding their ambition. My research has found that those who score high in what's called vulnerable narcissism have very high they have very high ambitions, but they they're very they're more likely to hide it from others and feel shame over having high ambition. So I imagine that you'd probably find a correlation between the emotion of shame and that one.
They think also embarrassment is part of that story where people have some kind of ambition and they know there's a chance they don't achieve it, and rather than people find out that they didn't achieve the goal, you know better to just not tell anyone. And then especially for the really ambitious things, it's like, you know, they might not even get close, and so they rather keep it secret.
Yeah, self harm, work, school, cheating, romantic desire, why violate trust? Family secret? No sex? Now, what's no people are secret about? No sex? Was that? Yeah?
Yeah?
I think this is also a very interesting one because of course there's you know, sexual experiences that you'll see in that list that people keep secret.
But another secret that they need.
Is when they are currently not having.
Sex dry spell dry spell time.
I think there's someone else's research that I can't remember their name right now, But essentially, people think other people are having more sex than than they are, and so if you feel like you're not having it, that might be something you don't want to admit to you.
So interesting, just like if everyone was just honest with each other, wouldn't we realize how much more similar we are to each other than different. I think the people who are out there having like millions of sexual partners, I think those are the outliers. I think that's what the research shows. But anyway, we can move on from other women men. Okay, so yeah, so that monestary in fidelity, someone's cheating That someone's cheating their partner to be with you. Finances,
Oh I'm so rich? Is that?
Like?
What how much I make?
You know?
Anything? Anything? Really? In the finances? Other harm hobby people are secretive about a hobby. They have habit addiction. Those two are very very neck and neck. They can maybe go together. We can. Let's just think of our addictions as hobbies. That's a better framing legal things. I guess abortion, well, now, even with the ruling, you can't even more people probably be secretive about that preference preference for.
What anything it could be. You know, one person confided in me, I don't like Radiohead. Just either liking something that people that you don't want people to know you like, or disliking something that you don't want people to know you dislike.
Gotcha. Romantic discontent, hidden relationship, sexual orientation, physical discontent, mental health, social discontent, trauma, employment belief ideology, marriage proposal secret about a marriage you a two secret from like the parents, or something that you made a marriage proposal to someone.
A proposal that has yet to happen. Is the one here where you're.
Yeah, yeah, you're keeping that you already did the proposal, and you're keeping that secret. Pregnant, poor work performance, surprise, being secret about being surprised about something.
Isn't it that you have a surprise plan for someone?
So, oh, I'm not very good at like, guess what you mean? Drug use? Uh? And then the least frequent is work discontent. Yeah, why would people be secret about work? Just good? I think people love to bond with each other over how discontent they are about work exactly. Yeah, Okay, so you found ninety seven percent of your participants say they currently have at least in one of those secrets from this list I just read. So this covers discovers
a word swath of humanity there. Yeah, that's really cool. Okay, So let's let's ping pong back to the development in childhood aspect. You know how parents can foster a healthy relationship with their children that enables both privacy and a healthy level of trust and communication to avoid heightened secret keeping.
Essentially, what you want to do when you're a child reveals something that upsets you or that you're disappointed by, or that even makes you angry, and as hard as it can be in the moment, you do not want to respond with an angry outburst or severe disapproval because if you respond in a really negative way, the team will come away thinking, well, that didn't go well. I don't want to do that again. And so what you
want to do is respond with compassion and acceptance. You can be disappointed, but you can still be there for them and say I can help you with whatever it is thing. The compassionate response will keep the door open for future confessions, whereas an angry outburst is going to potentially close that door. You want them to feel okay coming to you with things that are hard to talk about, and they're going to make themselves vulnerable to reveal these things.
And that's really not the.
Moment when you want to respond extremely negatively. The other thing to do is you also want to model effective coping skills yourself. And so if you're if your way of dealing with problems is really counter is really visibly counterproductive, you know, you have these you know, outbursts of anger or you know, don't handle stress, well, you know, kids can pick up on that, and if they see if you're modeling non effective coping skills, they might develop those two.
And so there's some research that shows that when parents really are you know, over controlling and don't have good coping skills themselves, their children are more likely to become ruminators, you know people, rather than coming to someone with help, just thinking about it all on your own.
This is great, great burning advice in general. Yeah, you really don't hear that much this kind of advice and some parent books, you know, the well secrets. It's not a topic that is that prevalent in the psychological literature. Right, I mean, you're the guy, right, You're you're the leader in this, in this the study of this this topic. So well, who else, who else in the field is studying this topic, folks.
You know in they're not really well, there's a really fascinating research from like a long time ago.
Now.
Dan Wigner did some research in this space. James Pennebaker does research that's related. He finds that when you sort of engage and express their writing, you know, journaling can can not necessarily does, can can really help. It's important to distinguish that from actual disclosure actually talking to someone. The more that journaling looks like actually talking to someone,
the more it helps. When you're getting someone when you're trying to challenge your own counterproductive lines of thought, a lot easier for someone else to do. But if you're trying to do it alone, that's the goal, trying to find a new perspective that helps you moving forward.
Is it true that some secrets are more frequently confided than others.
Yes, In fact, the way the order of that list you were reading was ordered in that way with so for example, work discontent is the secret we can finde in most in other people, as in it's common to be discontent at work. It's common to have that secret, but people also typically talk about that with other people.
Oh, I gotcha, that was literally how I read that? Here? Everyone, I'd like to take a moment to talk about one of my favorite products that helps support my body and mind as I age. On the Psychology podcast, we frequently talk about forms of wisdom and self actualization that are often achieved in our thirties and forties or even older. But it can be frustrating to finally know what you want out of life just as you start to lose
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of morality and secret keeping? What do you do? Do you like have a hard stance on that or do you try stagnostic?
Okay, I was about to answer in a very different way.
The morality, the morality of secret keeping is the bigger question. Let's let's see if we end up there. The way morality seems to be most important to secrecy is the morality of the behavior that you're keeping secret. And the more that someone believes their own secret to be immoral, the more they feel ashamed with that secret, and the more they ruminate on that secret, and the less capable they feel with coping with the secret more that's the
hurts their well being. So it's a really powerful dimension of secrets in terms of coping less well with them and being more hurt by them. And then also with respect and morality. When you're deciding who to talk to, which almost always you should talk to someone not necessarily the person you're keeping the secret from. You want to choose someone who will see the morality of that issue
in a similar way as you. If they're going to find what you tell them to be extremely morally wrong, that's not going to be so helpful to you in most cases, So you kind of want to find a like minded individual or just someone removed from it all.
Okay, And then what about the other direction in which we could take this.
Question, the morality of secret keeping. There are some there's a class of secrets that most people agree.
Is not im moral to keep.
It's not wrong to keep these secrets, and people will call those white lives where you know you're just saying something to be nice. If the reason you're holding back a truth is just to be nice and polite and kind and not needlessly hurt someone's feelings, people will say that's generally the nicer thing to do, rather than being brutally honest and hurting their feelings for no good reason.
If you're keeping a secret from a partner, the moral you think this thing is, the more the other person would really find it to be a betrayal to have kept this thing a secret. And so you know, when you're keeping something secret that could damage the relationship if you were to reveal the secret. That's when we get into some really hard questions as to what you should do, even if you think it's.
Moral or immoral.
Most people, you know, there's this expectation of honesty and openness, and if the reason you're holding the secret back is you think it's good for the relationship, it's tough there. So the classic example is you've achieved on your partner, should you confess to it? And you know, one thing that I think is an important issue when it comes to that question is was this just a one time thing.
Dan Savage will say that if it was a one time thing, if the only reason you want to reveal this is to get this thing off your chest, well you could be taking this heavy burden off you and just placing it right onto your partner. And so if this would just really upset them and it was a one time thing, some folks will say, you know, maybe it's better for the relationship to withhold that. If it's not a one time thing, I think most folks would
say that's a problem. If it was a repeated defense, I think most people would say, you do have to reveal that because there was a problem there. That's not going to solve itself. The final thing to think about there is would your partner want to know? And I asked a group of three hundred people and committed relationships
this question. Imagine that your partner is traveling for work and a total lapse of judgment, they get drunk, they cheat on you, this has never happened before, this will never happen again.
Would you want to know?
And seventy seven percent of the participants said yes, And that's surprise. I thought that number would be lower. But the important point there is that some people would want to know and some people wouldn't. And so if this was a one time thing and you're trying to decide what to do about it, I always suggest talk to a third party. This decision is so big, it's so consequential, that there's there's no reason you have to decide it alone.
That's a really good point. A lot of moral quandaries in these kinds of situations. You know what they're not telling you, A secret does more harm than good, and you can, you know, utilitary instead of a field day thinking about that kind of stuff. So let's let's see you have like a really juicy concrete example. Can you tell me a little about Dale Coventry and Jamie Kuntz's secret, the two public defenders.
Yeah, so these are two Illinois public defenders. One of them has since passed away recently. But at the time they had they had the secret, and they had this
secret for twenty six years. And the secret that they were keeping is that they knew their client who they were representing, had committed a crime murder, and they knew that someone else was sitting in jail for this murder, someone was wrongfully accused and imprisoned and was innocent, and so they knew that this person was sitting in prison innocent, and this was a secret they kept for twenty six years.
And the reason why they weren't able in their perspective to reveal the secret is they learned it with attorney client privilege, and their client refused, did not give them permission to reveal this information, not until after his death, and he did pass away, and they did finally come forward with the secret, and this person was eventually released from prison, but he was there for twenty six years. They described what it was like to have this secret,
you know. They didn't say it was hard to hold back. They didn't say it was hard to dodge questions. What made the secret difficult was just that they had to live with it. They just had to think about this thing every every day, or every time someone wrongfully accused was let free. Of course, they were to be reminded of this huge secret that they were sitting on for decades.
Yeah, it's just Oh I read that story. I was just like, man, I don't want any secrets in my life. You know, I'd rather wear my I do wear my heart my sleeve. And sometimes it's awkwardly, you know, like, I don't know. I guess it's not the secret, but as it's like having no filter, I don't know what is that and what is that about me? I no filtered? Yeah, I just don't like keeping things inside that are that
could be wise in some way. But anyway, Well, what are some lessons we've learned from the trauma literature that's really interesting me as well? You know, like I really I love Jeames Pennabaker's work and I love that you cited it in your book. Yeah, can you kind of talk about that connection a little bit.
Yeah, So the relationship here is the ways in which we cope with trauma can be similar or can be helpful to understand the effective ways to do so when it comes to keeping with your own secret, it doesn't have to be about trauma, but it can give you clues about what's the most healthy response here. And so, you know, James Pennamaker's early work showed that when people had traumatic experiences that they tended to not talk about
with their friends, their health was worse for it. And so that earlier study was looking at people who recently lost their spouse and people who talked less about their grief or about the death of their spouse, were unhealthier, they had more health problems. And this is where this idea comes from, that talking about traumatic experiences is potentially more helpful. Often is more helpful than not, and so this is where this research on express of writing or
journaling comes from. James Pennamaker wanted to see if he g people the chance to work through their trauma without the complication added by the other person potentially responding and a help or unhelpful way, you know, could they do better? And it turns out yes, if what you use your journaling for is to find a way forward. If you're just sort of ruminating on the past in your journal, now it's just a written record of harmful rumination, but
you know what you want to do. If you feel really negative about something, and if you feel like you're perseverating on it and you feel like a bad person for it, that's a signal to me that you need to change something. And often that change of perspective is really easy to find when talking to another person. What another person can offer you that your journal can't is emotional support or is to call you out on something
that is not healthy. These are things that are a lot easier for other people to do, and this is why I suggest for most all situations, talk to someone about your secret. They have so much to offer you when you do. And it turns out the average experience of confining a secret is one people say is helpful. Maybe it's because they're choosing the right people, but even if someone responds just in a lukewarm way, people will
find that even helpful. So we don't mean much when it comes to confining secrets and people have a lot to give.
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Go to sacoaching dot org. That's sacaching dot org. I look forward to welcoming you in December. What are the three dimensions of secrets?
So the three dimensions of secrets? You know, people often ask me you have these thirty category the secrets? Which ones hurt more or which ones are more okay to keep? And the question, the reason why that question is to open ended in that format, is well, thirty different kinds of secrets to give you a good answer to that question, to tell you how each category of secret is different from each other.
Category of secret. And that's just too many.
Comparisons, and so a better way to understand how secrets differ from each other. Sort of what the themes are we use in thinking about secrets is to understand could we sort them in a meaningful way? Turns out that we can. And to really well represent how people naturally think about their secrets is to be arrived at these three dimensions that come from not me, I'm not making these up. These came from the participant data themselves.
Factors factors, yes.
Right, factor analysis, but on data that was generated by participants. We didn't sort of give them the categories to begin with. And so one we've already talked about morality, This is the really big one. The more immoral we believe our secrets to be, the more we feel ashamed of them. Another dimension people see their secrets as naturally varying along is how much their secrets involve other people and our
relationships with them. And so some secrets are really highly relational, all the ones about relationships, all the ones about sex.
But other secrets don't.
Involve other people, and these secrets feel much more personal and individual. You know, A hobby is an example of that. And it turns out the less the fewer people who are involved in our secrets when our secrets only involve ourselves. We feel more isolated with these secrets. The third dimension is how goal oriented the secrets are, and often that means in terms of our work life, but not always, and so secrets that are really high on goal orientation,
you include secrets around finances and secrets about work. And then secrets really low on this dimension seem to not be based in some obvious goal. They seem to be based in more feeling. You know, things like sexual preferences, and you know, things that are more emotional in nature, experiences of trauma, things that are not directly linked to
some goal that you're trying to achieve. And so the less our secrets are goal oriented, the less insight we feel we have into them, and we're not really sure why we have them or what to do with them. And the reason why it's so useful to know that there's three dimensions of secrets. It suggests that there's three ways in which a secret might hurt us. We could feel ashamed of a secret, we could feel isolated with a secret, or we could feel uncertain and unsure what
to do with the secret. But if there's three ways in which a secret can hurt you, it also means there's three ways in which a secret doesn't have to hurt you. And the good news is that in ninety five percent of cases, we see there's a dimension in which secret is not hurting you. And what we do in the research is help people figure out what that is because it starts pointing you to a.
Helpful path forward.
And so once you understand these dimensions, you can say, well, you know, is one of these a path forward to me? So if you feel the secret is not wrong and a moral even if you feel isolated with it, even if you feel unsure about it. People pointing out to people that there's nothing wrong about the secret, it helps them move forward.
This is really cool. This is a lot more levels of nuance about secrets than people are aware of. I'm glad we're having this conversation. So what are some tips to deflect direct questions in a conversation about a secret?
So talking about secrets is helpful, but you need to be choosing the right person. And so if someone who would not be the right person to discuss the secret with is asking you a question that you don't want
to answer, what can you do. One of the most effective things you can do is ask a question of your own, because the normal course of events is people ask answer questions that they were asked, and even though you haven't yet answered their question, if you ask a question, in most cases they'll just answer, and in most cases
they won't even return to the original question. Because conversations move on, you can push into another direction, and so instead of asking a question, you can also just introduce a new topic into the conversation. Hey, what are you doing this weekend, and just like, hey, let's talk about the weekend instead of what we're talking about now, And in most cases people just will let the conversation move on. It's very rare someone will say no, no, no, what about
that question I asked? You know, two conversational rounds ago, And so that will help you in almost all situations. What if someone had said really does press you on the question and you really don't want to answer it, You could say I don't want to speak to that. You could say you know that's through private. Those aren't
the best responses, though. A far better response is to say, you know, I appreciate your question, or you know, I'm glad that you are there for me and asking this question and know that, like I value our relationship, I just don't want to get into that right now. Let's talk about that at some later point in time. And so essentially thanking them for trying to look out for you and just saying now it's not the right moment. People feel much better about that than just saying I
don't want to talk about that. Yeah, we don't want to think our friends, our and our significant others are not comfortable enough to reveal something to us, and so that's not the impression you want to give.
Typically, that makes a lot of sense. What is the purpose of creative projects and outlets for secret revealing?
There are these ways and post secret it's a great example of this. For if you can't find the right person to reveal a secret to one way forwards sort of just push that secret out into the world and
that can feel good for a little bit. You know, we see in our research when people reveal secret anonymously online, it can lift the burden of secrecy at that moment when people look, you know, reveal secret in some anonymous way post secret or we have this thing that you might be lucky enough to stumble in Central Park where you find the secret telephone where you could listen to
other secrets and reveal your own. What is helpful about all these forms of revelation is, you know, sometimes the hardest part is just admitting to yourself this thing happened and it's real and it really happened and nothing will change that. And so for many people the first step is kind of admitting to it out loud and some respect.
But what's even more helpful than just, you know, releasing your secret, and so the ethor is observing how another person responds to it, and that's why conversation with another person is often much better. But if you're not ready for that, you know, maybe the first step is saying it out loud alone in the room.
You know.
Maybe the next step is revealing it anonymously through post secret or something like that. But I think what you want to work up to is talking to someone about it.
I've never heard of post secrets. That's that's a new one for me.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's project that's been going on for a long time now and it's still ongoing.
Cool.
Well, I just want to end this interview on maybe the most positive note, which is what is uh, what are there. Don't know there exist positive secrets, you know, like when I tell like a surprise birthday party or like a promotion, the person's going to get so like that's yeah, can you talk a little more about you any research you've done in positive secrets?
So, positive secrets can be really fun and exciting, and for that reason, they are very different from your prototypically negative secret. A couple's been trying to get pregnant and then is pregnant, they'll often keep that a secret to find the right time to tell everyone, find the exciting time to tell everyone. Any kind of surprise gift, marriage proposals commonly are kept secret too, And some of you know,
life's most joyous occasions start off as secrets. And why those secrets are so different is often the whole point of the secrecy is this big exciting reveal, And when that's what the situation is, we feel very in control over the secret, and we feel good about the secret because it's about something positive and we expect a positive outcome to revealing it, and so we feel really in control over this, and so it's not just feeling positive, but feeling in control is really what's real. So healthy
about this situation. There's another kind of positive secret though, that people don't necessarily have the intent to reveal. And that's what I call you know, what do I call these?
Oh?
I call these secret joys. And so, you know, a lot of hobbies fit this category. You know, someone secretly collects coins, or someone secretly likes cartoons, or you know, for some people, recreational drug use. And so if the reason you don't tell other people about this is that you just don't want to deal with them not understanding,
or maybe they might even disapprove. Another one example is, you know, meditation is another common one here, and so sometimes people think, I know I enjoy this, I know I'm doing it in the right way that's not harmful to me. Rather than deal with people not getting it, or rather than deal with people's disapproval, I'm just going to keep this to myself. And that kind of situation for me, it shows that there's other kinds of solitude than sort of this negative social isolation we kind of
think of. When it's something you feel good about and you feel sure about it, you can feel a sense of independence and autonomy that comes from keeping the secret. Like if I think what It's like, well, if positive secrets feel so different, if we feel so in control over them and feel like we're doing the right thing for the right reasons, and we feel sure of ourselves, I think the question is, how can we feel that way about our other secrets?
What could get us there?
Yeah? Well, I've thought more about secrets in the past hour than I have my whole life, and I've just got so much I learned from you today, and I'm sure our listeners did as well. Thank you so much for the work you've done over the over more than ten years of your career, and thanks for being to my podcast today. Thanks for really appreciate it. Thanks thanks
for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you join in the discussion at thusycology podcast dot com. We're on our YouTube page thus Ecology Podcast. We also put up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.