Longitudinal associations between keeping a secret and psychosocial adjustment in adolescence

Increasing bodies of evidence suggest that keeping secrets may be detrimental to well-being and adjustment, whereas confiding secrets may alleviate the detriments of secrecy and benefit well-being and adjustment. However, few studies have addressed the consequences of keeping and confiding secrets simultaneously, and even fewer have done so longitudinally. This article reports on a two-wave longitudinal survey study among 278 adolescents (aged 13-18 years) that examined the associations of keeping and confiding a specific secret with psychosocial adjustment. Results confirmed a hypothesized longitudinal contribution of keeping a secret all to oneself to psychosocial problems, including depressive mood, low self-concept clarity, low self-control, loneliness, and poor relationship quality. Furthermore, confiding versus continuing to keep a secret all to oneself was associated with decreased psychosocial problems after six months, whereas starting to keep a secret versus not doing so was associated with increased psychosocial problems. These results suggest that the keeping or confiding of secrets may affect adolescents' psychosocial well-being and adjustment. © 2008 The International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development

I Feel Like I Know You: Sharing Negative Attitudes of Others Promotes Feelings of Familiarity

Holding similar negative—versus positive—attitudes toward a third party has been shown to predict increased closeness to a stranger. Here, the authors examined whether this effect is mediated by the heightened feelings of familiarity engendered by shared negative attitudes. In Study 1, participants who shared with a (bogus) stranger a negative attitude of a professor subsequently reported knowing more about the stranger than those who shared a positive attitude, but only when they did not feel strongly about the attitude. In Study 2, a familiarity manipulation produced high levels of closeness among participants who believed they had a lot of information about a stranger. Among those who believed they knew little about the stranger, closeness was facilitated by sharing a weakly held, negative attitude of a professor. Discussion considers the relevance of these findings to the interpersonal attraction literature