Does every person have a secret?

“Almost everyone keeps secrets, and they may be harmful to our well-being, our relationships and our health,” said Michael L. Slepian, PhD, of Columbia University and lead author of the study. “How secrecy brings such harm, however, is highly understudied.” The study was published in the journal Emotion.

Why do people need secrets?

By keeping something secret, people can protect their their reputation and their relationships with close others. Yet, when people choose to keep secrets, they run the risk of feeling isolated from other people, which can lead to negative well-being outcomes.

Is it normal to have secrets?

We found that 97 percent of people have at least one secret at any given moment, and people have, on average, 13 secrets. A survey of more than 5,000 people found that common secrets include preferences, desires, issues surrounding relationships and sex, cheating, infidelity and violations of others’ trust.

Does everyone have secrets they never tell?

On average each person currently was keeping at least 13 secrets from the list. According to the study, at least five of them were ones they had never told to anybody. The most common secrets: 60 per cent – a lie or financial impropriety.

How long do men keep secrets?

The study of 2,000 Britons s found that the average man will keep a secret to themselves for around two hours and 47 minutes – almost 40 minutes less than women. More than one in ten guys even admitted to blabbing someone’s private secret within 10 minutes or less of first finding out about it.

Is it bad to keep secrets from your partner?

Between couples, holding secrets from one another tended to make people feel less authentic due to the duplicity of the secret-keeping. The less authentic we feel, the more our well-being suffers.

Why do people like to share their secrets?

Secrets are like currency and we typically only share them with people that we trust. When someone shares a secret with us, it often strokes our ego knowing that someone trusts us enough or esteems us enough to share their personal currency with us.

How many secrets do people really keep?

In Slepian et al.’s (2017) studies, they developed a list of 38 types of secrets that people tended to keep. Some secrets are those that we might share with a close friend or family member, but some secrets are those that we simply will not share at all.

What are some secrets you don’t want others to know?

Most reflect the actions we took or thoughts we have that we don’t want others to know, such as telling lies or having extra-relational thoughts (thinking something romantic or sexual about someone other than your partner). Holding a secret someone entrusted you to keep is near the top of the list.

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