Keeping Secrets

20:40Leslie John:Oh, yeah. So there's some fascinating research by some scholars in the medical area where they have asked, interviewed patients essentially whether they've hid some really pertinent health information from their doctor, right? The very person who has taken an oath to protect them. and it's 80 % of people admit to not being forthcoming, to hiding something from their physicians. And it's super relatable, right? But it's also bananas on another hand, right? Because this person could help you, but it's understandable because health stuff is often so sensitive.

21:25Yeah, and someone is trying to quit smoking, for example, and their doctor has been urging them to quit smoking for a number of years, but they've in fact been sneaking a couple of cigarettes or they're trying to drink a little less, but they haven't been successful, it's hard to come clean and tell your doctor, this is what's actually going on in my life.

21:43Leslie John:It really is. I had this really funny moment in college where I went to the clinic to get it. I wanted an STD test, and I get to the clinic, and I was so impressed because when you get there, they let you write down what your issue is. So you never have to say the words out loud. So I wrote it down on the sheet of paper. I handed it in. But then when it was my turn, this is like a Larry David episode. When it was my turn, the nurse said, Leslie John, STD testing.

22:20Leslie John:Nightmare.

22:32You tell the story of a physician named John Cullen, who was literally about to cut open a patient to take out their appendix, but then realized that the patient may in fact not have appendicitis after all.

22:48Leslie John:Yeah, this is the, like, a super grand poobah. That's in the American Academy of Family Physicians president, Dr. John Cullen. Maybe that's what made it a little bit harder, actually, because he was so high status. At any rate, he was literally about to cut open a patient to take out their appendix. But he had this kind of sixth sense that something, you know, you do enough reps of these things and you get a sixth sense and something wasn't right. and apparently symptoms of drug abuse specifically methamphetamines they can actually resemble those of appendicitis and so before he cut her open dr color gave it one final chance he said i quote we're about to cut you open here are you sure you don't want to tell me anything else wow finally the patient fessed up and um the surgery was aborted i mean it's kind of incredible isn't it?

23:44People are willing to have themselves cut open instead of revealing something that they think is shameful. Yeah. Yeah.

23:55You also tell another hospital story, this one involving a patient who was bleeding uncontrollably during surgery.

24:04Leslie John:Yes, this one's even more shocking because it was a life-threatening situation. So before the surgery, the surgeon asks the patient, you know, are you taking any medications? And the patient says no. And then the surgeon comes out to the waiting room just before he's about to operate and says to the mom, are you sure she's not taking anything? Again, the surgeon had kind of a sixth sense. And then the mother said, nope, nothing. Finally, the surgeon asked again and is imploring her to be honest, please, please, this is your daughter's life. And finally, and it wasn't even the daughter that revealed this.

24:44Leslie John:It was her mother that finally revealed that the child, the daughter, the grown daughter was taking weight loss supplements, but of course was too ashamed to say so. And I guess that interferes with bleeding or something. And that literally saved her life. The surgeon ran back in. It was that serious. So it's really, it's very real, the shame we feel around opening up, the apprehension, the worry that someone's going to judge us is a very, very real concern. Because look at the lengths people go to to avoid it.

25:28besides complicating our medical care when we don't share things with our doctors i understand there's research showing that secrecy negatively affects our immune functioning

25:37Leslie John:yes when you keep a secret one of the tricky things is that your mind is very active keeping Keeping a secret is not an inner activity. It's not a neutral thing. Yet we often think that that's a neutral thing, right? We think that not sharing is neutral. But in fact, it can be an incredibly active process. So when you keep a secret, think about keeping a secret. You have to constantly monitor, right? When you're in a conversation where it could be relevant, you got to monitor your brain. Right. And that's stressful. And so that literally can increase your cortisol, your stress hormones. It can affect you in this way.

26:19Leslie John:And it also, there have been lots of studies showing that when you are keeping a secret, you score lower on IQ tests because it literally preoccupies your brain. It takes away brain space.

26:46You talk about one of the costs of self-concealment is that it can keep us from forming relationships or deepening relationships. You tell the story of perhaps a trivial encounter in an elevator when you were a young scholar on the job market. Tell me that story, Leslie. Yeah.

27:04Leslie John:So one of the things, the principles that's really important in new relationships, new friendships, new acquaintanceships, new romances is mutual self-disclosure. It's like a ping pong pattern of reciprocity where you say something, the other person reciprocates with something just as deep. You don't start super deep. You start maybe on a more shallow, but then you go back and forth, ping pong back and forth, and you get increasingly more vulnerable with each other. This comes back to even Arthur Aaron's studies, right? The 36 questions where you get people to ask and answer questions to each other, and that makes them like each other and forge friendships.

27:47Leslie John:And so this encounter, this is what I call a reciprocity fail. When one person puts out an olive branch, they put themselves out there, and then they're shut down. So what happened to me, I was trying to get an academic job. I was on that academic job market. I'm in my like Banana Republic black suit, which fun fact, after the fact, I realized I still had the stitching and the double vent in the back. The stitch I hadn't unstitched it. So rookie, so endearing. So in this this rookie academic job market, what you do is there's a is that a big hotel and all the different universities that are recruiting.

28:25Leslie John:They rent out different suites. And so every hour on the hour, there's this jamboree of rookie candidates moving from room to room to pitch themselves. So I found myself in the elevator. I get into the elevator and there's one clearly a job candidate in there. The elevator doors close. So we're literally in a steel vault. And I say, I let my guard on. I just say, oh, I'm so exhausted. my whole body just was like exuded exhaustion and then what did the the fellow job candidate do he straightened right up and he said oh this is such an exciting and fun opportunity to get senior faculty to weigh in on all my research it's so amazing and then I like gave him the stink eye with my whole body I just was like in my mind what I thought is like really we're literally in a steel vault and you can't, you, we can't just be real, like have a, a real moment of kind of shared feeling that would make us both feel more relaxed.

29:28Leslie John:And, you know, it's interesting, this idea that a reciprocity, the sting of a reciprocity failure lingers because we see each other regularly at conferences. Um, he's very accomplished and I'm sure he's a really nice guy, but I've never felt the urge to like go chat him up. And I think, I think I would attribute it to that.

30:00In other words, you basically, you know, you put yourself out there, he declined. And the point that you're making is not just that you didn't have an exchange in that elevator for 30 seconds, but in some ways, it's had ramifications. You know, it's echoed, if you will, down the years, where you actually haven't tried to make a connection with it.

30:17Leslie John:Exactly. And so imagine if we play the other route of, imagine if he had reciprocated and been like, I know, I just had this crazy interview. Can you believe it? This person said that or blah, blah, blah. Like a moment, a moment like that. Imagine we could have been lifelong friends.

30:39So many of us, I think, intuit that self-concealment has costs, Leslie. And many of us, I think, intuit what those costs are. But one reason we hide is that we believe that we alone harbor shameful secrets. Talk about this idea that when it comes to the things that we hold secret, we somehow imagine that we are the only ones holding those secrets.

30:59Leslie John:Yeah. So I think a big reason is that secrets are not visible. We don't see all of the secrets that people are holding. It makes us feel like we're the only ones that hold secrets, which makes them even more kind of clandestine, right? And they take an even bigger toll on this. It's interesting. Michael Slepian over at Columbia has done, and Malia Mason, they've done some really great work on a questionnaire to find out what people's common secrets are. And it turns out that there are lots of things that people tend to keep secret. It's a very normal thing. I'm wondering if social media in some ways compounds this, because now we not only don't hear our people's secrets, but we're constantly being presented this view of other people's lives that's always glamorous and excited and people having a great time at fancy restaurants.

31:54And now we feel, well, clearly the fact that I'm eating a reheated dinner from three days ago, it must show that I'm the only one who has this dirty secret. Everyone else is having a grand old time.

32:06Leslie John:Right, exactly. Social media is so toxic for that reason. It's exactly as you said. People present a curated portrait of themselves. And logically, we know this, but we have a hard time correcting for it, the visceral feeling. You see someone who looks gorgeous with their perfect children and their perfect life, and you think, oh my God, meanwhile, my children are screaming. And so it makes you feel badly about yourself, these kinds of comparisons.

32:43When we come back, Leslie comes up with a survey asking people if they have ever cheated on their taxes, watched pornography, or called in sick when they wanted to spend a day at the beach. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Thank you.

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35:55This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Can you think of a secret you haven't shared with anyone? How does keeping the secret make you feel? What do you think would happen if you shared the secret with others? If you're willing to share your personal story with the Hidden Brain audience, please find a very quiet room and record a voice memo on your phone. Two or three minutes is plenty. Email the file to us at feedback at hiddenbrain.org. Use the subject line secrets. Again, that's feedback at hiddenbrain.org.

36:33Psychologist Leslie John is the author of Revealing, the Underrated Power of Oversharing. Leslie, as you dived into the world of embarrassing disclosures, you and an advisor once came up with survey questions. this turned out to be a very challenging exercise. How so?

36:52Leslie John:I think I might hold the world record for the most awkward doctoral advisor-advisee conversation. So when I was a doctoral student, you know, I've been interested in this topic of revealing privacy, self-disclosure secrets for a very long time now. And so when I was a doctoral student, I worked with my advisor to devise a series of surveys where we asked people sensitive questions and we varied different things to learn different things. And so we needed to come up with really sensitive things to ask people. And so we sat in his office. It's one of these like flashbulb memories for me. You know, you remember exactly what you were wearing and where you were seated.

37:39Leslie John:um yeah so he just starts with a bang he says what about bestiality

37:47Leslie John:oh man and so yeah i was like the person that i'm most trying to impress said that and so i was like what do i do do i do i go for something super sensitive like that in my the things that I bring to the table brainstorming, I felt like everything I said then was like, maybe he's going to think I'm a prude. Or then if I said something really bad, like, have you ever neglected to tell a partner about an STD you had? Then he'd think I was reckless. And just even the thought of that, that I am worrying about my advisor, like it just, oh gosh, it was so cringy. But we got through it. We powered through and we came up with a great list.

38:30Leslie John:And I've since been using those questions and variations on those themes for kind of my career so far.

38:40So the survey took the form of questions that start with, have you ever? I'm wondering if you can read out a list of these questions, Leslie, and I want listeners to ask themselves if they have ever done any of these things. Okay.

38:54Leslie John:So yeah, the questions, be warned, their doozies if you have children around. Have you ever had sex with the current husband, wife, or partner of a friend? Have you ever had a fantasy of doing something terrible, e.g. torturing to someone? Have you ever stolen anything worth more than$100? Have you ever looked at pornographic material? Have you ever made a false insurance claim? Have you ever cheated on your tax return? Have you ever claimed to have education that you didn't actually have? While in a relationship, have you ever flirted with somebody other than your partner? Have you ever taken credit for someone else's work?

39:31Leslie John:Have you ever let a friend drive after you thought he or she had had too much to drink? Have you ever lied about your income to someone? Have you ever called in sick when you weren't sick? Have you ever pretended not to see a beggar to avoid being seen as stingy? Have you ever gone on a date only to make somebody else jealous? Have you ever drunk so much that you got a hangover? Have you ever littered in a public space? Have you ever failed to do chores in a shared house or apartment? And have you ever failed to tip a waiter in a country in which tipping is customary? These are the questions, and these I've more or less said them in a decreasing order of sensitivity.

40:07I'm sure people must clam up if someone asks them this question in a research setting.

40:12Leslie John:That's what I would think too. But again and again, like across all of the research I've done, the one thing that really surprises me is how forthcoming people often are. It almost seems like people really want to reveal. And in fact, there's been subsequent research showing that we do have this kind of internal drive to reveal. And it's fascinating because there's even some of these things are even illegal. Now, the way we ask matters, right? So if we had asked face-to-face in an interrogation room, I don't know that people would be forthcoming. But the way we asked these, we asked it on a pseudo-anonymous online survey, so it was done in the comfort of your home.

40:53Leslie John:You don't have someone staring there watching you, judging you.

40:59In one set of studies, Leslie has examined whether people think less of those who have revealed unsavory things about themselves. Obviously, the answer is yes, right?

41:10Leslie John:Not necessarily, which is pretty shocking. So what we did in this study was we asked people, let's say we asked, who would you rather hire? And candidate A, one of the questions they had been asked on this intake survey was, have you ever been reprimanded at work? Yes, no, choose not to answer. We, of course, constructed these profiles ourselves. So candidate A to the question, have you ever been reprimanded at work, says yes, just goes out and says the worst thing. Candidate B, on the other hand, clicked the choose not to answer box. So here we have a choice. The participants had a choice. Would you prefer someone who admits something bad that they've been reprimanded at work to someone who simply but very conspicuously refrains from answering, says, I'm not telling you, I'm opting out, I'm concealing, essentially?

42:06Leslie John:And it turns out that again and again, people prefer the revealer. They prefer the person who admits to the thing, even if it's a bad thing, relative to someone who opts out of answering, who very saliently says, I'm not doing this.

42:29in fact you find something along the same lines when it comes to romantic relationships as well

42:34Leslie John:yes that so we did this the first time we got these results we thought this is this a false positive this is nutty noodle as my late grandmother would say but so we did it again with other questions other samples other scenarios and one of the ones we tried was in the realm of dating, where what we did was we asked people, which of these two people would you prefer to date, person A or person B? And one of the questions was, have you ever filed a false insurance claim? And person A ostensibly has said frequently. So they're saying the worst possible thing. The other person, person B, has clicked choose not to answer.

43:20Leslie John:And again and again, people, they'd rather date someone. Now, neither of these is fine specimens. My father used to always say that. That's a fine specimen. Yeah. Neither of them are someone you want to take home to your parents. But if push came to shove, right, if you're in this tight bind, which would you choose? Because that's deeply revealing of human nature behind it. And again and again, we prefer the revealer.

43:47and what do you think this is telling us why is it that we are so averse to the hider even when the only option is a revealer who tells us that they've done something wrong

43:58Leslie John:yeah it's a great question and we did many many studies to try to understand why this was happening and why it was not happening in the end what we discovered was that the preference for a revealer is driven by a global character judgment. The person who conceals is not to be trusted. So much so that we'd rather date someone, we'd rather employ someone, we'd rather even sit next to the subway besides someone who comes clean, even if it's not the greatest thing to say.

44:36So researchers have found that several cognitive biases shape our desire to conceal. One of them is called the impact bias. What is the impact bias, Leslie?

44:47Leslie John:Yeah, so the impact bias is how we tend to overestimate the longevity of emotional events. So we think that when we break up with someone or if someone breaks up with us, we think we're going to be down in the dumps for a very, very long time slash eternity. When reality, when that happens, like we're often surprised to see like, yeah, it sucks, but we're better sooner than we think. Similarly, we think the highs last longer than they do. Like, you know, we get a raise. We think we'll be like feeling amazing for a really long time, but that we quickly adapt and it quickly subsides. So the impact bias refers to how we overestimate the duration and intensity of emotional events.

45:39The impact bias ends up shaping what we regret, and also the difference between short-term regrets and long-term regrets. In one study, the psychologists Thomas Gilovich and Victoria Medvek explored this difference.

45:55Leslie John:It's really fascinating because what they found was that in the short run, we tend to regret the things we did that resulted in bad outcomes. so-called sins of commission. So in disclosure language, it's, it's, you say something, maybe you're a little tipsy. You say something, you feel like you go a little bit too far at a dinner party. The next morning you have a massive disclosure hangover where you're that gut wrenching. Oh, why did I do that? And you just want to hide. And that sucks. And so we regret that a lot. So in the short run, right after we regret the things we do, the regrettable things that we did, But in the long run, the pattern flips such that what we end up regretting much more over the course of our lives, the things that we didn't do, the sins of omission, the things that we didn't do that we should have done.

46:53Leslie John:Those are the things that leave us thinking, what if, what if I had told my college crush that I was into him? Like, what if, why didn't I do that? What would be the harm? What are the missed opportunities? Meanwhile, we don't ruminate at all over the long haul about, OK, maybe I maybe I was rebuffed by this person, but at least I found out, you know, you get kind of closure and you don't continue perseverating.

47:20There was a book by the hospice care nurse Bronnie Ware titled The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. What were these regrets, Leslie?

47:28Leslie John:Yes. So Bronnie Ware, my hero, she has spent, as a palliative care nurse, she spent time, a lot of time, with people at the very end of their lives. So she gets to know them a lot. And she wrote a book where she collated her observations on what people tended to regret. So on their dying beds, what did they say they regret? And here are the top five regrets. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. Number two, I wish I hadn't worked so hard. Number three, I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Number four, I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

48:18Leslie John:Number five, I wish I had let myself be happier. And so you can see four out of five of them are regret over things we didn't do that we wish we had done. And one of them especially is that is one related to not sharing more of ourselves, not expressing our feelings. You say that you yourself were inspired to engage in more self-disclosure by Bronnie Ware's book. Tell me about a recent incident with your mother where, in some ways, you were made aware, if you will, of all the things that you hadn't told her. oh geez yeah this was this was a scary episode it was um it was christmas day and my husband and i had just finished uh spending a lot of the day cooking in the kitchen thanks to grandparents who took care of our little boys and um we were putting the turkey on the table and my mom looks gaunt she says i'm really not feeling well it's something's just come over me i gotta go lie down So she went to go lie down.

49:17Leslie John:We serve the stuff. And then I go upstairs to find her. And I find her in the bathroom, clearly having vomited and looking at me with this glazed look of like unclear who I was. And so I grabbed her and I held her in my arms like a baby. And as soon as I did that, her eyes rolled back in her head and she went limp. And I thought that she had died in my arms.

49:53Leslie John:And I just, I sprang up and I bolted out the door. I said, call 911. My husband's calling 911. I bolt out the door to our neighbor, who's a nurse. and I bang, bang, I'm banging on their windows and she comes and she right away, she runs in and then we get to the bathroom where my mom was. And my mom looks at us like, what's all the fuss about? What are you doing? I'm fine. She was fine. It turned out that she, we think it was food poisoning. And apparently when you vomit so violently, it can disrupt what's called your vagus nerve, which like overstimulates it and the way you need to kind of reset your brain by passing out.

50:36Leslie John:That's my layperson version of it. But oh my gosh, that was so terrifying. But it really, it really reminded, like my mother at the time was 74, super spry. She's still super spry. It really reminded me that, I know it's cliche to say, but it's so true that you never know when your time is coming. And so with disclosure, what that means is that like, don't hold back. Don't hold back telling someone all the ways you love them. And so I ended up writing this, um, like love list, um, this list of things to my mom about the way, all the ways I love her and, um, all the big things and all the little things.

51:21And yeah, it was really important

51:24Leslie John:to me.

51:38Did you read the letter to her or did you give her the letter?

51:42Leslie John:I put it in her stocking and it had all kinds of things in it, like big things. For example, I'm so grateful and I love the way she and my father, they always, I mean, we are very lucky in that we had, you know, we weren't wealthy, but we definitely were comfortable. And so we were in a privileged position to be able to pursue our interests. And my parents really, really encouraged that. They said, always pursue what you're interested in. And I feel that I got to this amazing place called Harvard doing what I love doing because fundamentally, you know, I worked hard, but I pursued my interests and I got a lot of luck and all those other things.

52:20Leslie John:But the kind of life, the important life lessons I'm so grateful for. And then the small stuff too, like, oh, I love how she, this, oh my gosh, she, so I love gummy candies and what my, but I'm very particular on the colors. I like the green ones, if they're lime, not apple. And I love the red ones. And so when she comes to visit us, she gives me a bag of jujubes, gummy bears with curated, just the colors I like. She picks out the ones I don't and eats the dregs. And then she gives her daughter. Like, oh, yeah, it's amazing.

53:07In our episode next week, we continue our exploration of the power of self-disclosure. Look for the episode titled, Coming Clean. We also look at when and where the scientific evidence suggests it may be best to withhold information and to play your cards close to the chest. That's in our Hidden Brain Plus episode titled, When to Hide the Truth. If you're a subscriber, that episode should be available in your podcast feed right now. If you're not yet a subscriber, please go to support.hiddenbrain.org. If you're using an Apple device, go to apple.co slash hiddenbrain. Again, that's support.hiddenbrain.org and apple.co slash hiddenbrain.

53:53Leslie John is a psychologist at Harvard University. She's the author of Revealing, The Underrated Power of Oversharing. Leslie, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

54:04Leslie John:It's been a delight. Thank you.

54:16Can you think of a time when you came clean to someone else? Do you remember what happened and how it felt? If you are willing to share your personal story with the Hidden Brain audience, please find a very quiet room and record a voice memo on your phone. Two or three minutes is plenty. Email the file to us at feedback at hiddenbrain.org. Use the subject line, Secrets. Again, that's feedback at hiddenbrain.org.

54:48Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends about it, in person or on social media. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.

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