研究表明 費心保密降低幸福感

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

每個人都有祕密，現在我們或許知道了你究竟有幾個祕密。

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.

哥倫比亞商學院管理學教授邁克爾·斯萊皮恩帶頭開展了一項新研究，調查了數千人的保密習慣，並挖掘出受訪者大約1.3萬個祕密。

The research, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 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 spouse.

研究結果發表在《人格與社會心理學》雜誌上，該團隊分析了此前10項研究中收集的祕密，然後將其分爲38種常見的類型，從考試作弊到隱瞞性取向與偷情。

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

分類後，研究人員邀請2000名受訪者將他們的祕密對號入座。

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.

最後，研究人員發現，普通人在任何時候都有38類祕密中的13種。他們還發現，這13種祕密中有5種從未與人分享過。

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.

最常見的祕密就是研究人員所說的 "非常關係"，還有性行爲、說謊和浪漫慾望。研究人員把祕密定義爲人們不想讓別人知道的事情。

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

人們不太可能保守的祕密是墮胎、求婚和性取向。

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

除了祕密的數量和類型外，研究團隊還研究了保密對個人行爲和健康的影響。

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

相比與人交流時主動保密，人們在獨處時更擔憂自己的祕密。

He added that when people were thinking about their secrets, they also 'acted as if they were burdened by physical weight.'

他補充說，當人們在想自己的祕密時，他們 "表現得像是被身體的負重所拖累"。

Slepian suggests that the reason for this powerful effect is its presence as a goal that is never truly accomplished.

斯萊皮恩認爲，這種強大影響的原因是祕密的存在好像一個從未真正實現的目標。

'You might encounter a conversation where you have to conceal it, but there might always be future moments down the road where you have to conceal again,' he said.

他說：“你可能會遇到一段你不得不隱瞞的談話，但是一段時間之後，你可能不得不再次隱瞞一段談話。”

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

與之前的其他研究一樣，研究人員也發現，保守祕密會對一個人的幸福生活產生不利影響。他們還特別研究了受訪者們沉思那些讓自己費心的祕密時的那種不真實感。

The only way to keep yourself from feeling these negative thoughts, Slepian believes, is to just think about secrets less - given the study found that the secrets themselves didn't lower well-being, but rather the thought of them did.

斯萊皮恩認爲，讓自己不去感受這些消極想法的唯一方法就是儘量少地去考慮祕密。因爲研究發現，導致幸福感降低的是人們對祕密的想法，而不是這些祕密本身。