Shame, guilt, and secrets on the mind.

Abstract

Recent work suggests that what is harmful about secrecy is not active concealment within social interactions but rather mind wandering to a secret outside of concealment contexts. However, it is not yet clear what predicts mind wandering to and concealing secrets. We proposed that emotional appraisals of shame and guilt for secrecy would predict how secrecy is experienced. Four studies with 1,000 participants keeping more than 6,000 secrets demonstrated that shame was linked with increased mind wandering to the secret. Guilt, in contrast, was linked with reduced mind wandering to the secret. The current work represents the first test of how emotions from secrecy determine how that secrecy is experienced. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

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