Keeping secrets harmful to health: Study

There are harmful personal effects just from thinking about secrets, reveals a new research.

In other words, keeping secrets is unhealthy as secrecy has been associated with depression, anxiety, and poor physical health, according to researchers at Columbia Business School of US.

The research, 'The Experience of Secrecy,'explores the common practice of keeping secrets and uncovers the physical and psychological consequences of this internal struggle.

It is a common tendency for people to mentally revisit their past transgressions, which leads to a lower sense of well-being or unhappiness, said the research co-authored by Professors Slepian and Mason, along with Jinseok Chun, a PhD student at the Columbia Business School. 

This is because secrets serve as a reminder that individuals are masking part of themselves, which leads them to feel inauthentic. This cycle can hurt or destroy relationships and negatively impact our overall health, according to the study.

The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology on May 08, 2017. 

"People anticipate that, once in a while, they will need to hide their secrets; they do so and move on," said Michael Slepian, co-author of the study and assistant professor of management at Columbia Business School. "However, people don't expect their secrets to spontaneously pop into their heads when irrelevant to the task or current situation at hand. This seems to be the real downside of having secrets from others."

"Secrets exert a gravitational pull on our attention, and it's the cyclical revisiting of our mistakes that explains the harmful effects that secrets can have on our well-being and relationship satisfaction," said Malia Mason, another co-author of the study and associate professor of management at the institute.

Throughout 10 different studies, the researchers analysed more than 13,000 secrets and discovered the 38 most common secrets kept, which can be seen in the graphic below, along with whether participants in the study admitted to sharing the secret or keeping it private.

5 out of 13 secrets we never share

The secret is, on an average, a person keeps thirteen secrets and five of which are never shared with anybody else.

"Extra-relational thoughts, sexual behavior, a lie, and romantic desire are consistently the top secrets shared with no one, whereas abortion, sexual orientation, and marriage proposals are infrequently kept entirely to oneself," reveals the study.

Researchers categorised secrets into 38 different types which are: harming someone, drug use, a habit or addiction, theft, committing an illegal act, self-harm,having an abortion, an experience of trauma, telling a lie, violating someone's trust, romantic desire, romantic discontent, extra-relational thoughts, emotional infidelity, sexual infidelity, being the "other woman" or "other man" (i.e., in a relationship with someone who is themselves in a committed relationship), social discontent, physical discontent, mental health, cheating at work or school, poor performance at work or school, professional discontent,a marriage proposal, a surprise, a hobby, a hidden (monogamous) relationship, a family detail, pregnancy, sexual orientation, sexualbehavior, not having sex, a preference, a belief or ideology, finances, secret (current or former) employment, an ambition, a counter normative behavior, and a personal story.