Keeping Secrets Weighs You Down, Literally
New research finds that keeping a secret can make you
feel as if you are physically burdened. Christie Nicholson reports
Can you keep a secret? We refer to keeping secrets as if
they are material things. And a new study suggests that when we know a secret,
we perceive ourselves as being physically burdened.
Researchers recruited participants to write a description
of either a serious secret, like a story of infidelity or sexual orientation,
or a more trivial secret. Then they looked at a hill straight on and were asked
to rate the hill’s steepness. Those subjects who wrote about an important
secret perceived the hills as steeper than those who wrote about trivial
secrets. The research is in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.
Earlier studies have shown that people who are physically
weighted down also perceive hills as steeper than those who are not.
In a separate investigation, researchers found that
subjects who recalled a significant secret also judged a target to be further
off in the distance than those who remembered a less meaningful secret.
Hmm. So maybe divulging secrets will relieve you of a
burden—then again, we better wait for a study on how stressful it is to lose
every friend who confides in you.
—Christie Nicholson
Image Source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1113908
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