Everyone has secrets - and now we might know just how many.

 

每个人都有秘密，现在我们或许知道了你究竟有几个秘密。

 

A new study led by professor of management at Columbia Business School Michael Slepian, has looked into the secret-keeping habits of thousands of people - as well as examining a grand total of 13,000 secrets between them. 

 

The research, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology¹, looked at the secrets collected over the course of 10 previous studies to come up with 38 common categories, ranging from cheating on a test to hiding their sexuality to sleeping with another's spouse². 

 

After breaking down the categories, the researches asked 2,000 participants to number the common secrets they are keeping that fit into the categories. 

 

In the end, they found that the average person was carrying 13 of the 38 secrets at any one time. They also discovered that five of those 13 secrets have never been shared with another person. 

 

The most commonly held secrets involved what researchers termed 'extra-relational thoughts', as well as sexual behavior, lying, and romantic desire. The researchers defined a secret as something they intended to keep from others. 

 

The common secrets that people were less likely to keep to themselves were abortion³, marriage proposals and sexual orientation⁴. 

 

In addition to the number and types of secrets people keep, the researchers also looked into the way keeping them affects behavior and health.

 

People become more concerned about the secrets they are keeping when they are alone than when actively⁵ hiding them from people they are interacting with.

 

Like other studies before it, the researchers also found that keeping secrets can have detrimental⁶ consequences for a person's well-being⁷. In particular, they examined how participants reported feeling inauthentic when they mused⁸ on the secrets that burdened them.

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