Kelly Owens

Now that we’ve explored the who’s and what’s of secrets, the time has come to explore the why: why do we keep secrets? Why do we tell secrets? Most importantly, what does this reasoning say about the stigmas present in common culture today? 

There are a few motivations for keeping information hidden under layers of the unconscious. To further break these reasons down, I’ve separated them into intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Plainly defined, intrinsic means driven by internal rewards. This is the motivation we feel when we are looking out solely for ourselves. Conversely, extrinsic motivation is the opposite. This is behavior driven by external rewards, or motivation that arises from outside of the individual. Additionally, I’ll take a look at one motivation that is both intrinsic and extrinsic.

As part of my research, I asked strangers to anonymously share secrets with me. Throughout this section, I’ll distribute secrets that I collected that fit each of the motivations to provide examples, in order to gain a better understanding of why we hide the parts of us that we do.

Loss of control

The fear of one’s private information being shared with those outside of one’s own brain is an example of intrinsic motivation for keeping secrets. Intrinsic motivation simply means that behavior is dictated by an internal desire and not being controlled by factors outside of personal desire. 

Self-control is defined as restraint exercised over one’s own impulses, emotions, or desires ("Self-control"). Should someone decide to tell someone else their secret, they are compromising this feeling of self-control. When we are the only ones who know things about ourselves, no harm can come of it: we control the facts. Once that external outlet has been let in, it’s impossible for us to maintain authority of our deepest desires. Somebody has now been where previously only you had been.

This can be linked back to the fear of uncertainty: what will this person do with the information? It’s easier to keep to ourselves so as to not give anyone the opportunity to exploit us. 

It’s also been said that if you really want something to remain a secret, you won’t tell anyone. Somehow, word always spreads and your information becomes public knowledge. If this is true, and widely accepted, why do we tell secrets at all if we know this could be the case?

On the one hand, our secret may be doing us serious harm, which will be discussed later as I investigate why we should tell secrets. There’s a time and a place where help needs to be sought for the well-being of the individual. There are also, however, times where we tell the secret for the risk. We say we don’t want anyone to know something, but if that were true we wouldn’t let the thought slip our minds in the first place because time and time again it’s been proven that generally, people can’t be trusted. A 2011 article written by the Daily Mail details the secret-keeping ability of women, not to be heteronormative. According to the study, women can keep secrets for an average of 32 minutes (Kelly, 2011). This is not to say that women are incapable of keeping secrets, but the numbers are alarming. This feeling of not being able to rely on others intrinsically motivates us to keep our most private selves hidden away.

"I told people I didn’t want to tell my crush that I liked him because I didn’t want to date anyone. I was really just afraid of rejection. Someone else told him and I got rejected anyways."

The person who shared this secret with me experienced a loss of control of their own information. Unfortunately, when they offered up their secret, they experienced a violation of their information. This is a choice we as human beings make when we offer up our secrets. We must entertain the possibility that it won’t stay with the person we chose to tell, we give up the power of our own thoughts.

Guilt

Another intrinsic motivation for keeping secrets would be attempting to lessen feelings of personal guilt. When we behave in a way that does not align with our personal morals, we feel guilt. So to hide that guilt, we bury the behaviors or thoughts that make us feel this way, pushing them into the unconscious and making them secret. This motivation comes clearly from within one’s self. 

"I drink my roommate’s milk out of the carton, even when it’s not mine, and I feel bad every time"

"Once I skipped dance and stayed in my car the whole class"

"I use all my roommates shower products and never my own"

"I drank a stranger's entire water bottle before I realized it was theirs, so I just re-filled it and put it back"

Each of these examples illustrates people acting in a certain way that maybe doesn’t align with their beliefs, or perhaps feels bad about their actions. Intrinsically, these individuals shared these secrets most likely to “get it off their chest” because their shame kept it buried. These are those moments that would make someone’s face redden or make them feel embarrassed due to their own feelings on the matter.

The main motivation behind keeping a secret comes down to one key word: fear. We have so many fears about the repercussions this tidbit of information may have on our everyday lives. On a most basic level, fear is one of our natural instincts (Discovery news). It’s a human’s emotional response to circumstances that we believe have the potential to create a harmful outcome. This is not just limited to physical damage, as the threat to one’s emotional and mental well-being can also generate this fear. 

The instinct theory of motivation, in turn, attributes behavior motivation to a sort of “programming” that each individual possesses due to these instincts. Sigmund Freud believed that instinct was the “ultimate cause of all activity” (Cooper & Pervin, 1998). If this is true, our fear instincts will undoubtedly motivate our behaviors, one of these being the act of keeping a secret.

Using the research I’ve conducted, the root of all secrets being kept under wraps is specifically the fear of judgement.

Judgement and Humiliation

Almost all secrets that we keep for extrinsically motivated purposes come down to the fear of judgement or humiliation. If it’s not us who cares about the way we’re acting, then we’re keeping a secret because we believe that someone else will have something to say about it. We fear that feeling because the want to be accepted is so strong. 

“Some experts say that people’s greatest fear is not death, suffering, or even public speaking. It is humiliation and judgement” (Eck). In an experiment done by Richard Wiseman, Ph.D., he studies children between the ages of three and five and marks their behavior. During the experiment, a child in a laboratory sits facing a wall. The experimenter tells the child that he’s going to set up a toy behind them, and instructs the child to not turn around and peek at the toy. Meanwhile, the children are being filmed. The experimenter then returns and asks the child whether to not they peeked. Notably, approximately half of the three year olds lie about it to the experimenter, and every single one of the five year olds peek and all of them lie. 

Because of the children’s age and lack of life experience, they were incapable of predicting that someone would ask them if they peeked. As the children get older, they are more prepared for this question. The younger children are not, which is why only half of them lie: “What the children lacked was the ability to predict that someone would ask them if they had peeked. They lacked the belief that they could be judged” (Wiseman, 2007). 

This is a key concept, as it presents the idea that we begin keeping secrets and telling lies because we’re afraid of what other people are going to think. The children didn’t foresee this judgement, and why would they? It’s only as we get older that we start to focus on the world around us and consider repercussions of our actions, or consider how others may feel about it. 

Perhaps this is why kids are such open books. They don’t think twice about how someone will feel if they shout out wetting the bed, or tell their siblings about the extra cookie they got last night before bed. It’s always the parents who are hushing them, or smiling through their teeth as they feel embarrassed about the information the child is disclosing. Only after we’ve been conditioned and experienced social stigmas do we start to fear that judgement.

"I'm knowingly pursuing a guy with a girlfriend"

"I cheated on my boyfriend the night before we broke up. I never told him"

"I steal little things every once in a while when I feel like my life is too safe"

"I cheated on my SAT"

"I still pick my nose"

"I stole a condom because I didn’t know what it looked like or how to use it, and I was embarrassed"

"I wet my friend’s bed at age 20"

Each of these are secrets that have a social stigma attached to them. Consider how you reacted when you read each of the examples listed above. It’s unacceptable to wet the bed in your twenties. It’s not okay to cheat on your SAT . It’s repulsive that someone would pursue someone they know is in a committed relationship. But who decided that’s true? Who said you can’t pick your nose past age five? Why should you be embarrassed for not knowing what a condom looks like? Societal pressures have a way of making decisions for us. We fear that judgement more than we fear most things, which is a large reason we keep secrets. Why else would we not share these things?

A combination of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations would be the value of protecting. We keep secrets to protect ourselves and we keep secrets to protect others. We hide information because in the end, we just want to keep peace. If there are secrets we can share that will only hurt others and not benefit any party, we find it better to simply keep to ourselves. This isn’t always the healthiest option, as I experienced when keeping Tom’s secret: “Concern for others can lead to increased stress of having to maintain the secret while going along with life as if nothing has happened” (Quinn, 2014).  The following examples illustrate the concept of not telling secrets in order to protect others:

"My mom is an alcoholic, she’s getting help, though!"

"My parents think I’ve only drank twice since being at college - I drank 6 times last week"

"I had a one-night-stand during the first year I was dating my now husband. I never told him"

These examples illustrate secrets where telling others would only hurt them, and solutions have already either been found or are in the process of being found. In this case, telling these secrets would only do more damage than good. The same can be said about secrets of our own that we keep to protect ourselves, overlapping a little with attempting to maintain control. Protecting ourselves and others by keeping secrets can come at a cost.

Outside of the million reasons why we don’t share secrets, there are many reasons why we should, most importantly being keeping our health. Studies have shown that keeping secrets can actually cause harm to an individual’s physical and mental well-being. In various studies, people hiding traumatic secrets showed more incidents of high blood pressure, influenza, and cancer, while those who found an outlet showed enhanced immune systems: “In some cases, T-cell counts in AIDS patients increased. In another test, Pennebaker showed that writing about trauma actually unclogs the brain” (Jaffe, 2006). 

“We don’t realize that in keeping it secret we’ve created an obsession in a jar,” said psychology researcher Daniel Wegner (Jaffe, 2006). Essentially, the more you try to shove something out of your mind, the more you end up thinking about it. Secrets can engulf our minds and make it difficult to think about anything else. 

Secrets can have noticeable effects on the brain, as well, as neuroscientists begin to study the physiological processes that occur with the telling and keeping of secrets: 

“The cingulate cortex is wired to tell the truth. This ‘logical lobe’ signals other regions of the brain to share information so it can move on to more important functions, like learning. But when you keep a secret locked inside, you don’t allow the cingulate to perform its natural functions. Instead, it becomes stressed” (Roberts-Grey, 2013).

Essentially, this puts your body into “fight or flight” mode that’s often activated when we feel afraid or anxious. Secrets, depending on their stress level, can cause serious reactions in the body, so sometimes it’s best to release the information. This doesn’t have to mean that you sit down with somebody and talk it out, this can happen in various outlets depending on an individual’s level of comfort.