Psychologists Reveal What Type of Secret Will Make You Feel 'Energized'

Keeping good news a secret from someone could make people feel more "energized" and alive, a study has revealed.

People often want to share good news as soon as they learn of it. But the latest research, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, suggests that holding onto it for a period may come with some benefits.

"Decades of research on secrecy suggest it is bad for our well-being, but this work has only examined keeping secrets that have negative implications for our lives. Is secrecy inherently bad for our well-being or do the negative effects of secrecy tend to stem from keeping negative secrets?" Michael Slepian, the lead author of the study at Columbia University, said in a press release.

"While negative secrets are far more common than positive secrets, some of life's most joyful occasions begin as secrets, including secret marriage proposals, pregnancies, surprise gifts and exciting news."

For their study, Slepian and colleagues conducted five experiments involving more than 2,500 participants with the aim of exploring the issue of why people keep positive secrets, and how it may affect them.

In one experiment, participants were shown a list of nearly 40 common types of good news—for example, buying a gift for oneself or reducing a debt.

The participants then had to inform the researchers which pieces of good news applied to them at that time, and which of these had they kept a secret.

Some participants were asked to reflect on the good news they kept secret, while others thought about good news that was not secret. In both cases, the participants had to rate how energized the news made them feel and whether or not they intended to share the news with more people.

The researchers found that, on average, participants had 14 to 15 pieces of good news. Of these, an average of five to six were kept secret.

The participants who reflected on their positive secrets reported feeling more energized than those who thought about their good news that was not a secret. The participants who said they intended to share their news with others also reported feeling more energized, regardless of whether or not it had been kept secret.

"Positive secrets that people choose to keep should make them feel good, and positive emotion is a known predictor of feeling energized," Slepian said.

The researchers then conducted follow-up experiments, which yielded further insights.

For example, in one experiment, participants were shown the list of common types of good news and asked to select those they believed would be most likely to happen to them in the near future.

One group of participants was asked to imagine keeping the good news secret until they told their partner later that day to make the revelation surprising. Another group was asked to imagine that they were currently unable to reach their partner and so would not be able to tell them until later in the day.

Participants in the former group reported feeling more energized than those in the latter group. In another experiment, the researchers found that participants tended to keep positive secrets for internal or personal reasons, while they kept negative secrets because they felt forced to by external pressures. These two experiments reveal the importance of choice in this context, according to the researchers. The team also found that positive secrets made people feel enlivened when they could choose to keep the information secret.

"Across several studies we find that positive secrets are not burdensome and fatiguing, but rather energizing. We find that when people keep good news to themselves before sharing, they feel more energized," Slepian, who is the author of the book The Secret Life of Secrets, told Newsweek.

"What we found especially surprising is that even positive secrets people do not intend to reveal are still energizing. The reason for this is that, compared to other kinds of secrets, people choose to keep positive secrets for their own enjoyment, and this intrinsic motivation is energizing. When we feel in control, we feel energized and ready to take on whatever lies ahead."

One limitation of the research is that they were conducted in the U.S. and it is possible that people in other countries might react differently to keeping positive secrets due to cultural differences.

"We hope to expand our studies to a broader population to examine how generalizable the findings are," Slepian said.

Update 11/15/23, 9:27 a.m. ET: This story was updated with additional information from Michael Slepian.