“That’s why her hair’s so big,” said Janis Ian in “Mean Girls.” “It’s full of secrets.”
According to a recent study, Gretchen Wieners’ hair isn’t the only thing affected by her repression from confession. By keeping her secrets pent up, Wieners could have also increased her chances of chronic or long-term illness, not to mention emotional instability.
In a 2013 study, University of California, Berkeley associate professor Clayton R. Critcher and Cornell University associate professor Melissa J. Ferguson found that participants who were asked to conceal a secret showed deficits in intellectual activity and physical stamina.
The repression is associated with higher stress levels, which have been shown to cause detrimental long-term effects on physical health in otherwise healthy individuals.
Wieners should have shared her confidential information in order to relieve some of the stress she put on her body, according to the study.
But what if she didn’t feel comfortable sharing her secrets with anyone she knows?
That’s where anonymous secret-sharing apps such as Whisper have carved out their market.
“My secret: My little always forces me to drink against my will,” wrote one user on the app, a mobile social network that allows users to post anonymous confessions and geotag their locations.
Although Whisper users generally post less serious confessions — e.g., “Fell off a canoe at Lake Wauburg” — those who write to sites like PostSecret tend to send in more confidential confessions.
Smaller secrets may not induce as much nervous tension. However, emotionally charged ones that have to do with trauma, closeted sexual orientation or infidelity cause stress and can harm long-term health, according to four studies published in the American Psychological Association’s 2012 edition of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
“Secrets weigh people down,” a brief of the studies reported. “People who recalled, were preoccupied with, or suppressed an important secret estimated hills to be steeper, perceived distances to be farther, indicated that physical tasks would require more effort, and were less likely to help others with physical tasks.”
Meg Konigsburg, a 22-year-old UF advertising senior, said she feels that weight.
“I would definitely say there’s a level of stress in keeping a secret,” Konigsburg said. “There’s a lot more anxiety.”
She said she’s currently suppressing the urge to share private information about someone because she wants to be a good friend.
Because Konigsburg’s lips are sealed, her friend didn’t have to turn to sites like PostSecret or Whisper to relieve stress but turned to her instead.
She said it isn’t worth it for her to reveal her friend’s secret, but she understands why people do.
Telling someone or posting about your secret can be very cathartic, Konigsburg said.
[A version of this story ran on page 10 on 3/13/2014 under the headline “Spill it: Study shows keeping secrets increases chance of illness"]
