Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "Why We Keep Secrets" with Michael Slepian

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"Why We Keep Secrets" with Michael Slepian · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  G'day, humans! Welcome to the show that goes where others don't.
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  The show that rejects partisan squabbling and tribal groupthink.
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  I'm Josh Zips. I'm your humble warrior princess,
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  hunting down the world's most fascinating minds
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  to wrestle with one provocative question each week.
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  Much of modern culture and politics and media is tailor-made,
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  tailor-made to panda to what we already believe and distort what we don't
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  to reinforce our biases and exaggerate our differences.
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  But change doesn't happen in an echo chamber.
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  It's time to leave the mental comfort zone to flex our minds
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  and step on some landmines. Folks, it's time to have uncomfortable conversations.
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  Today on the show, Michael Slepian, an academic who studies secrets.
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  He works at Columbia Business School, previously was a visiting scholar at Stanford University.
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  He has a PhD from Tufts University.
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  And he's an elected fellow of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology.
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  He studies the psychology of secrets, how keeping secrets,
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  affects all the things that govern our lives, our social lives,
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  our organizational lives.
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  He studies, yes, the psychology of secrecy.
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  Enjoy as much as I did the one and only, Michael Slepian.
• 1:36
  I am right on the river I can overlook it and see New Jersey on the other side.
• 1:52
  Oh, how long?
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  You can see some good sunsets if I work very late because the sunsets late now.
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  Thankfully, thank God we finally got there.
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  I miss it. I was just back for the first time in December as Omicron was going crazy.
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  Oh, yeah. I love my social engagements.
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  We were like, we're felt like one by one as people would be like, oh, now I got it.
• 2:16
  Now I got it. Now I got it.
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  Yeah, there is one day we're just.
• 2:20
  Yeah.
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  It was funny.
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  And I lived in New York for up until a few years ago for 12 years.
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  And it hadn't been back since before the pandemic.
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  And yeah, it was funny.
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  It was weird.
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  Yeah.
• 2:37
  Yeah.
• 2:38
  What is a, let's get, let's get started with the basics.
• 2:43
  What is a secret?
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  I define secrecy as the intention to withhold information from one or more people.
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  And so the information is the secret.
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  Is it different depending on why I'm doing it?
• 2:58
  No. So for whatever reason, you want to hold that information back.
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  You want to intend to keep it a secret.
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  And whoever you're keeping it from, whether it's one person or a hundred people, I would call it a secret.
• 3:11
  Right. Does it matter whether I'm doing it as an active commission or an active omission?
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  If I'm just allowing a misperception to slide without correcting it?
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  This is so, this is what's so handy about the definition of secrecy as an intention.
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  And so however you need to keep your secret, whatever actions you need to take or don't take,
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  it's still a secret as long as you intend to hold it back from one or more others.
• 3:37
  And is it wrong to do so?
• 3:40
  This is a harder question.
• 3:42
  So when it may be wrong to hold a secret back is if someone would feel that they have the right to know that information.
• 3:53
  You know, you can imagine your romantic partner who feels that they should have access to certain kinds of information about you.
• 3:59
  If someone is being hurt by not knowing the information, then also it might be wrong to keep it.
• 4:08
  And let's not bury the lead here. You had a big secret withheld from you by your parents. What was that and how did you find out?
• 4:15
  So what's happening on this day? This is in 2013.
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  I have just been doing secrecy research for maybe only a year at this point or maybe a couple of years actually at this point in time.
• 4:26
  And so it's very new and I'm presenting this research as part of a job interview at Columbia.
• 4:32
  And the whole day is about sharing and showcasing this research on secrecy with the folks who had become my future colleagues.
• 4:40
  And that day is a long one. It then goes all the way to dinner where I'm out to dinner with the folks.
• 4:46
  And then I continue on. We get some drinks at a bar.
• 4:49
  So very long day where we're talking about here. And around midnight, I get a call from my dad.
• 4:56
  And that's really surprising that he would call me out of the blue let alone around midnight.
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  And then I saw a few minutes later, he called a second time. And so I became really concerned that something bad has happened.
• 5:11
  So when I finally call him back, he says, Michael, I need to talk to you.
• 5:16
  Maybe you should sit down for this. And he then tells me that he is not biologically able to have children.
• 5:23
  He was telling me that he's not my biological father.
• 5:28
  And as you might imagine, that's incredibly shocking to learn.
• 5:33
  And the new reality, though, I immediately accepted it, even though it was it was shocking, you know, to learn also my younger brother, my only sibling, who was born five years later, is in fact my half brother,
• 5:46
  conceived from a different donor that might have even been more shocking. But I readily decided, I'm okay with this, you know, my dad is still my dad.
• 5:57
  And you know, I don't choose my friends based on genetics. So what does it matter if I have a genetic connection to my parents.
• 6:04
  That was what was going through my mind, but it was the secret keeping that was harder to understand.
• 6:11
  It turned out that my entire family, everyone apart from me and my younger brother had known about the secret the whole time.
• 6:20
  And how did you ask them why they had made that choice?
• 6:26
  The first question I had after I learned about that my brother was conceived from a different donor was, why are you telling me this, and why now?
• 6:36
  And as far as why they were telling me about it, then it turned out that my brother had learned just a few days ago, which is another story.
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  They're like we have to tell you to, of course, and they very kindly waited until after my interview was over. And what he'd learned against their will.
• 6:55
  So my brother a few days before this was on the phone with my mom, our mom, and she was talking about a recent argument she had had with her, her father, our grandfather, and just mentioning it offhandedly.
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  And my brother was like, that's so weird. You don't ever have arguments with him. What were you arguing about? And she said, oh, I can't tell you.
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  And he was like, no, tell me. I want to know. And she said, oh, I can't. I promised. It's actually secret. And I promised I would never tell you.
• 7:29
  And so that's, that's a great way to mix in one.
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  Until you reveal it. And that's what, and that's what happened.
• 7:38
  That's extraordinary. So I'm trying to get my head around the ability to hold a secret for that long and then blunder into revealing it.
• 7:48
  Do you, what do you suspect was going on in your mom's mind there? Do you think there was some desire to get it out?
• 7:58
  She could have just not talked about that conversation to begin with.
• 8:01
  Yeah, years later, years later, I would ask my mom about this. And you're right. She would say the same thing that she thinks at the end of the day, she must have wanted that secret to have come out.
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  And that's what happened.
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  Had she consciously thought that she would take it to a grave?
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  That was the plan.
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  Did you ask her why?
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  I started asking much later, especially when I started writing this book included, you know, when did you start considering revealing this secret?
• 8:47
  I also asked what was it like to keep this secret?
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  So the first question I was shocked when I asked, you know, at what point did you first start considering revealing this secret?
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  She asked me when my first paper on secrecy came out. It was my own research that had changed her thinking or had started to change her thinking.
• 9:07
  And to the second question, you know, she told me that it wasn't hiding it in conversation that made that secret difficult to your point.
• 9:17
  All you have to do is just not say it.
• 9:20
  It's not like my younger brother and I were asking questions about our genetics anyway. So it's not like it came up in conversation a lot.
• 9:26
  And it's not that it was difficult to hold back in conversation when it became relevant to the conversation.
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  But rather, she said what was difficult about that secret was having to think about it in her thoughts and start wondering, have we made the right decision?
• 9:43
  And that maps so well onto what I was finding in my research at the time, which is it's not that it's not the moments where we're in a conversation and holding a secret back that seemed harmful.
• 9:56
  It's all the other moments when we're thinking about the secret alone in our thoughts.
• 10:02
  I love that you sort of forced her to out herself through your work. She's like, damn it. I thought I was going to be well.
• 10:09
  Right now my son goes and doesn't devote his damn life to keeping secrets that I'm going to have to deal with this.
• 10:15
  It's interesting that she, I mean, I wonder what you think that your parents were thinking in concluding that it would be best for you guys not to know this.
• 10:25
  But what is the, what is the great harm in your knowing it that's being avoided by withholding it?
• 10:32
  The concern was that if we were to ever learn this information, we would feel less apart of the family, particularly of course my father's side of the family.
• 10:43
  Do you have siblings? So he can't, he doesn't have any biological children.
• 10:47
  That's correct.
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  So there would have been no envy between you and the quote unquote real kids.
• 10:53
  Correct. Yeah.
• 10:55
  It's funny. I mean, I remember my family has children who were conceived using a donor egg and they're still little.
• 11:07
  So they haven't been told yet. My children were born through IVF because I'm married to a guy.
• 11:15
  So there it's obvious. And so like we know that that secret can't be a secret.
• 11:20
  Right. I mean, it's a secret because they can't leave four years old in the sense that they don't really understand how biology works yet.
• 11:26
  But we talk about it openly.
• 11:28
  And I'm, I'm somewhat grateful that for the biological necessity of not having the option of having to choose whether to keep that a secret.
• 11:36
  And I'm grateful that I'm not in the position that my friend is in where they have to kind of figure out how to have that conversation.
• 11:45
  Do you have advice about how people navigate that?
• 11:50
  Yeah. More generally, the problem here is it's really hard to find the right time to reveal a secret, especially a really big one.
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  And so for my parents, especially in earlier years, there was no conversation to be had.
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  You know, the idea of donor conception would be too complicated when we were too young.
• 12:10
  Now, of course, there was a point at which we could understand it very well.
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  And then there was a point at which we were both adults and could very much understand it.
• 12:19
  And it's like, whoops, we, you know, our children are adults now and we never told them.
• 12:24
  Whatever your secret is about, if it's something that you are thinking it's time to reveal and you're waiting for that perfect moment to reveal it, it pretty much never comes.
• 12:36
  Pretty much have to make that situation for yourself. It's not going to just present itself typically.
• 12:45
  Is it, I mean, I think I suspect that part of the solution here is to try to downplay the magnitude of the reveal by weaving it into everyday conversation from an early age.
• 12:56
  That's certainly my policy with my kids, which is just to talk in a matter of fact way about grown up things, even if they don't understand them yet.
• 13:04
  And just find ways to just include them in conversation about, oh, you were in this woman's tummy or, oh, you know, you, you know, you came from, you know, we got a special gift from another person who was the, you know, the bloody blah.
• 13:17
  I understand it at the age of three. They will understand it at the age of 10. At some point, there's an incremental sliding scale at which they're self awareness becomes such that they're capable of asking further probing questions.
• 13:28
  Is that a way of avoiding the like we have to sit down and have a gigantic talk like I can imagine a universe in which your parents just made it part of dinner table conversation that you guys were, you know, a special gift from somebody because, you know, daddy needed it.
• 13:44
  And so that's what happened. And then that sort of opens the door just to crack to further conversations without having to have a magician's flourish about it. Is that an option?
• 13:55
  I think that's exactly right. And that's something they could have done in my particular situation. I guess as with many other people's situations who is a little more complicated than that because my dad's mother, my grandmother really also did not want us to learn the secret.
• 14:12
  And so she was part of this story as well.
• 14:16
  That's an interesting thing. Tell me about her.
• 14:19
  When I learned that I wasn't biologically related to my dad and his parents, the thing that came to my mind first was, wow, my, his parents, they both passed away now, but me and my brother were so close with them.
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  And, you know, and so inspired by them and thought so highly of them and to learn that the nature of our relationship wasn't based on some sense of genetic obligation.
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  It made those relationships for me more special, not less.
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  And so I sure wish I could have had a chance to talk about it in that way with them.
• 15:09
  And had I died already by the time you found out my grandfather, yes, but my grandmother know what she just saw it as this unfortunate betrayal of a promise and we didn't, I didn't express what I'm saying now, which I think is unfortunate.
• 15:29
  But that was the reality.
• 15:32
  I don't know. We, we, I don't think she wanted to talk about it.
• 15:35
  Right.
• 15:38
  It's kind of heartbreaking, isn't it? To think that you would have perceived her as being less than it would be exactly the opposite.
• 15:48
  Is there a character type that she fits into that you see in your work on secrets?
• 15:54
  I have a family member who takes it as their responsibility to make sure that everybody else is protected, I suppose.
• 16:03
  And they, they conceive of themselves as being the, the orchestrator of the entire family unit where things have to be withheld strategically truths have to be managed, revealed strategically, you know, offenses prevented from being taken.
• 16:23
  And it becomes this enormous kind of emotional burden for this person where they regard themselves as being the conductor of this vast orchestra of truths and untruths.
• 16:36
  And I sometimes wonder what's the point like people will deal with things as they deal with them.
• 16:42
  So exactly how person X is going to deal with secret why and it's not actually your responsibility in the first place to be in charge of that, like they're a grown up, let them live their, their lives.
• 16:57
  Was there a bit of that in your grandmother?
• 17:00
  I think she was trying to protect us. I think that she was thinking about this information as was my father as just something medical and, you know, you don't need to know every medical detail about your parents.
• 17:14
  And that's just how they thought about it. And I don't think they were very bothered by keeping the secret.
• 17:21
  And I think it was, you know, my mom who, not at first and not even years, not even in early years, but in later years started thinking that perhaps it wasn't the right decision.
• 17:31
  But this, this just goes to show how complicated things are when so many people are implicated in a secret.
• 17:37
  And when you think about the typical secret that we keep, it usually just invocates us for the most part, maybe a second person.
• 17:47
  And I've not thought about it in this way, but how lucky we are, it doesn't feel that way when you're thinking about your secrets.
• 17:54
  But it's actually quite lucky when they don't involve so many people because the decision isn't so complicated and isn't so strong.
• 18:03
  Do we sometimes rationalize to ourselves that a lie or the keeping of a secret is to spare someone else's feelings and that, you know, it's a white lie.
• 18:14
  When in actual fact, we're just trying to not get our hands dirty and deal with reality.
• 18:20
  In other words, I'm a flash self-serving motive as empathy.
• 18:26
  We're definitely, when it comes to most secrets, trying to protect something, whether it's our reputation, a loved one's feelings, a relationship with someone, someone else's relationship with someone else.
• 18:38
  And when it is something truly that's, you know, like what we call white lies, most people agree that that is okay to do and actually kind.
• 18:48
  If you've just arrived at a party with someone and they say, how is my outfit look and it's far too late to change.
• 18:54
  It's better to be nice than to be brutally honest and hurt someone's feelings for no reason, especially when they can't do anything about it.
• 19:01
  Now, when is something not a white lie, even if there's sort of degrees of it, that's a tough decision.
• 19:09
  And so it's really important to ask yourself, why are you keeping the secret?
• 19:15
  You're speaking as if it's a given that it's better to lie to the person about their outfit.
• 19:22
  But I know some people, like my friend Sam Harris has a very black and white attitude towards lying.
• 19:27
  He would say, actually, in the long run, it's going to be better for everyone.
• 19:31
  Not to insult the person, but to just say, you know, I've seen you in better things, but you look fine.
• 19:38
  Or you find some tactful way of being honest because the credibility that you bank from doing so means that the person, A, will trust you and B,
• 19:50
  won't feel like they're wandering through life surrounded by sick offense, who always just say what you want to hear.
• 19:55
  They'll be getting a truthful reflection of the way that they're passing through the world.
• 20:01
  What do you make of those hardline truth tellers?
• 20:05
  If we're talking about white lies, even there, I don't agree, because the timing matters.
• 20:12
  You can be very helpful to that person if you talk about, if you unsolicited, be like, hey, what if you try this other outfit?
• 20:19
  I think as you're walking into the party, it's not the right time to be radically honest, timing matters.
• 20:26
  Let's talk about big lies. What does Edward Snowden tell us about sequence?
• 20:32
  He is this fascinating case, and he's described his experience with secrecy so well.
• 20:39
  And it's such a well written autobiography where he talks about his secret.
• 20:43
  His secret is that he's going to be a whistleblower.
• 20:46
  He's uncovered that the NSA has been secretly engaging in mass global surveillance.
• 20:50
  And for him, he sees this as directly opposing what the NSA is supposed to be doing, which is protecting civil liberties, not violating them.
• 21:02
  But this is a huge action that he's about to, or that he does undertake, because it means he has to flee the country and never come back, perhaps,
• 21:15
  because it's technically illegal what he did. And so he's making this incredibly tough decision all on his own.
• 21:22
  He spends six months carefully selecting documents and carefully sending them to journalists and then has to flee the country to meet those journalists.
• 21:35
  And his fundamental experience, what is having this secret, was that of feeling isolated and alone.
• 21:42
  And it's almost impossible to imagine what it was like to be him to what it's like to learn this massive secret that your government is doing something that you consider to be wrong.
• 21:58
  And that's this incredible story, but his experience is totally common. This is the primary experience we have with secrets that are much more mundane. We feel alone with them.
• 22:11
  What does that do to us?
• 22:14
  It turns out that when we choose to be alone with something, especially something big or upsetting or something that bothers you or something that you know you need to work on, when we choose to be alone with that thing, we don't develop healthy ways of thinking about that thing.
• 22:29
  And that's where the harms really come in from counterproductive thinking, harmful rumination.
• 22:36
  We all know the sense of being unburdened by sharing a secret that we've been holding on to.
• 22:43
  Does it matter who we're unburdening it to? I mean, is a therapist and is that friend who is serving the role of the kind of secret taker to take it off your shoulders in some way?
• 22:58
  There are people who are better choices and worse choices when it comes to choosing a confidant.
• 23:03
  And so people who generally are very good confidants are people who are compassionate, someone who will be non-judgmental, caring, kind, empathic.
• 23:13
  Another quality that turns out to be really helpful in a confidant is someone who is assertive, someone who will push you to do the thing that you need to do.
• 23:25
  As far as what qualities make someone a less good, confident confidant, that includes someone who's overly concerned with rules and norms.
• 23:37
  They tend to not be as attractive as confidants and then someone who is the talkative social butterfly, people also get a little nervous about confiding in them.
• 23:49
  Another really important consideration when choosing who to confide in is if what you're going to tell this person is to totally scandalize them, it's probably not the best choice by which I mean if they have a very different set of morals as you do, that could create some problems.
• 24:11
  That's what you just told them to be really morally objectionable, they're more likely to tell a third party essentially as a form of punishment.
• 24:20
  Right, don't tell my mom and uncle about my bad comments.
• 24:26
  Why is a rule follow a bad confidant?
• 24:31
  For the same reason, someone who'd be more concerned about the rules than helping you cope with a secret.
• 24:38
  Right, I see.
• 24:40
  In that case, Smodem is an interesting case and the question of whether or not you're doing something wrong when you breach the trust of a vast institution rather than breaching the trust of an individual is I think one of those unspoken things that we're grappling with when we think about things like Smodem and Assange, I recently interviewed Julian Assange's father.
• 25:00
  There's a two-part documentary about his struggle to free Assange and I sort of asked him about what he thinks of the morality about what Julian did potentially having endangered people's lives by dumping hundreds of thousands of pages of documents onto the web without any of the normal kind of redactions and contextualization that a journalist might undertake.
• 25:27
  Assange's father quite emotional and said that in comparison to the crimes of Western governments in destroying countries and invading people and killing a million Iraqis, how can you possibly claim that the person who's really guilty here is the person who spills the beans on things in a clumsy way rather than the person who are the people who in a meticulous and orchestrated way have destroyed a half dozen countries and created tens of millions of refugees.
• 25:56
  I guess that lands to someone who is thinking about a moral calculus and probably doesn't land to someone who values the protocols and procedures that set up the infrastructure of secrets that kind of permit modern democracies to function how do you think about that.
• 26:15
  I think that's entirely right and Snowden and trying to justify his choices made the point that he didn't just do this huge data dump that he very carefully selected the documents that would help people understand the programmatic secrecy that was happening or not programmatic secrecy that programmatic secrecy around what they were doing specifically.
• 26:43
  Yes, and in some ways that's the difference between what between a Snowden and an Assange yet they do get sort of conflated in the public consciousness.
• 26:55
  It's hard to know what do you make it like what do you make of the ethical.
• 27:00
  Angle there but you know I spoke to a military person when I was in the States who was saying you know these guys knew the rules they knew the rules that they were breaking they knew the consequences for breaking them so you do the crime you do the time.
• 27:14
  I think it's a fascinating question because there's this conflict right between what you think is the right choice and what is the right choice according to some other person or body and.
• 27:31
  We can see this in much more everyday examples if you cheated on your partner should you tell them and of course obligations of honesty and openness dictate that you should but at the same time.
• 27:48
  Especially if this was a one time thing if it's just going to wreck your partner and destroy your relationship someone else could say you're doing the right thing by keeping it a secret even though that's hard and even though you're supposed to be honest with your partner.
• 28:06
  Do we set ourselves up with too many expectations of fidelity and honesty such that keeping secret becomes the cost of doing business.
• 28:22
  Certainly when it comes to romantic partners this is pretty clear norm of honesty and openness and of course I think for our best friends we also expect something similar I think in and family members perhaps in certain situations as well.
• 28:35
  Definitely the closer we are to someone the more we expect them to be open with us and we would hope that they could reveal something to us even though it would be difficult to do so.
• 28:46
  Of course when it becomes difficult to do so people start wondering whether they should.
• 28:52
  Do you think we keep more secrets or fewer secrets in this era than we have in past.
• 29:00
  So in some ways I think we keep fewer especially when I think about you know generations and how we've changed over different generations I think you know I even think this kind of family secret that we were just talking about my of my own.
• 29:15
  I bet that's going to be less common today than you know then the 80s which was when I was born and I think we are starting to understand that there's a good reason to have these conversations sooner if for no other reason people can find out this information by accident all the time now thanks to genetic testing and so I think.
• 29:38
  I think as society changes as we you know I think I think my stereotype of kids today is they're much more emotionally competent than when I was a kid I just think as as we change a little bit over the years as a society we people recognize the value of having honest conversations even when they're difficult.
• 30:02
  There's definitely a recognition of the value of having honest conversations but I also wonder whether that's spilling over into a performativity around authenticity that's becoming its own load of bullshit so to speak.
• 30:19
  There's a whole there's a whole kind of way of doing Instagram and TikTok which is about the oversharing and like I'm going to be brutally honest with you now like I'm opening up to you in a way that I you know that I haven't before and you know all of this is so funny but I'm real and like the real deal is that you know I'm not perfect and.
• 30:36
  I don't know what to make of that I don't know whether that is actually the detonation of secrets or the construction of a complicated out of this of secrets presenting itself as authenticity.
• 30:51
  I think it's the second especially when you learn about you know folks who present themselves as leading this glamorous life and full of you know all these good things but then in reality you know that person is not happy or you know they're putting up some kind of front and so I think social media.
• 31:12
  Of course enables us to be far more open than we have ever before we can just broadcast something out to the world but at the same time to your point there's this competing motivation of self presentation which we have in the real world too but there's something very different about it when it comes to social media.
• 31:30
  I mean there's something very different might be that you are you are rewarded for seeming not to be phony like I think the 10 years ago there was a lot of look at how beautiful and glamorous my life is and there is still some of that but I think people have caught on to that and they they're aware of the artifice.
• 31:48
  Now I feel like people are more rewarded for being like I may be leading a glamorous life but you know what's in all I'm still a human just like you and watch me cry and the moat about you know this or that and how socially progressive or like I don't know how cutting edge I am in my in my moral sanctimoniousness and that people are getting rewarded for an openness that I don't know maybe there was that maybe it was just like that.
• 32:18
  It was better to be to have the bullshit look like bullshit and to have the secrets kept as secrets instead of pretending to reveal secrets and opening up the box and all that's actually there is you know an attempt at relatability that's equally phony.
• 32:35
  The benefits people get from revealing a secret in the real world and while having a conversation with someone else where someone says I'm here for you or I'm listening or someone gives you advice or guidance and I suppose you could get taste of that in the comment thread of a post but really you want a dynamic interactive conversation with someone to reap the benefits of revealing a secret and.
• 33:03
  It's hard to see people getting the same benefits when it's distributed across a bunch of really short comments on a post.
• 33:13
  It's the conversation that helps people do better that's what's so helpful about having talking about a secret it's not just getting it off your chest it's not just shouting it on the rooftops it's having a conversation with someone you trust that is what is helpful.
• 33:30
  That's interesting that's very interesting I was once asked by a British friend of mine who lives in Germany and about what I've noticed about the differences between American culture and German culture when I spend a lot of time in both countries.
• 33:45
  And I said I think that I think Germans are just more empathic I think there's more empathy and he was taken aback by that because he said I mean I think of America as the land of empathy as like Oprah and crying on shoulders and like I feel your pain and he said I find Germans to be much more stiff upper lip and less emotive and I said yeah I don't mean sympathy I don't mean like vomiting sympathy on each other in a performative way.
• 34:14
  I mean sitting down with people the cafes feel different the way that people converse feels different there just seems to be a greater connection between different strata of society in Germany and other Western democracies I would also include.
• 34:28
  That people are able to talk to each other from very different walks of life and kind of nail where each other are coming from in ways that I feel is is harder in the United States there's a bit more I don't know performativity a bit more self aggrandizement in the States a bit more trying to get one's word in and trying to get one's way.
• 34:50
  Whereas I felt there was a more kind of relaxed cavalier convivial conversational interest in one another in Western Europe and I think that that I'm reminded of that when I hear about you touching on what you just touched on have you noticed any do you think there are any cultural differences either between communities within the States or have you have you studied different countries.
• 35:15
  Yes and so the way we've looked at this question is looking at what someone's environment is like and essentially how they whether they put themselves before the group or not so for example collectivism when people prioritize the group over the individual we see that that is associated with.
• 35:40
  Secretcy seeming to be more in authentic and we're just these findings are just coming in now and so I don't know why or I don't know the answers of why it works that way but for some reason when you care more about the group.
• 35:55
  To have a secret from them even though you might be keeping it to maintain group harmony it for some reason seems to feel more in authentic.
• 36:06
  To maintain group harmony it feels more in authentic than what.
• 36:12
  Sorry they could be keeping a secret for all kinds of reasons I suspect often it's it's to maintain group harmony in that context but for some reason holding back from close to others.
• 36:24
  In that context it feels more in authentic relative to more individualist societies oh I see what you're saying yeah that's interesting.
• 36:33
  Yeah yeah sorry finish that thought as someone who's who's not in a collective society I just want to be like I don't know how it works like someone tell me but we're just we're just figure out now.
• 36:47
  Well I mean it's interesting like in your scenario if you think of any station society for example it's highly likely that there would have been no question of ever telling you if the matriarch didn't want it right there would be much more.
• 36:59
  I feel like much more of a communal secret keeping in a society that's more communal that's what I would assume to and to me that doesn't feel in authentic at all but it's it's the individualist inside of me saying that it seems.
• 37:15
  Yeah right what's a positive secret positive secrets are the fine ones for most of them not all of them there's an interesting.
• 37:27
  Example that doesn't fit what I'm about to say but for most positive secrets the point of keeping them is to reveal them in this changes everything so you got you have your marriage proposal your surprise party some big extravagant gift that's a surprise a couple who's been trying to get pregnant and then they are pregnant we we keep these kinds of things secret.
• 37:51
  In order to have this exciting reveal of this information and so positive secrets people feel good about them and that makes them very different but also people feel really in control over them.
• 38:02
  And that also makes makes for an important difference and so people don't feel burdened and fatigued by these kinds of secrets they feel excited and energized by them these kinds of secrets seem to be good for your well being.
• 38:16
  Good for the well being of the person keeping the secret or good for the well being of the person from whom the secret is being kept.
• 38:22
  The person who's keeping the secret and so even though it's just like with all our other secrets you have to be very careful about what you say you might be ruminating on this information it may require a lot of effort to maintain the secret and all of those things seem to be a social with positive outcomes when we're talking about a positive secret.
• 38:40
  Right what about the person from whom the secrets being kept like suppose that I know that someone is about to be proposed to and I'm getting all of this you know excitement by planning the engagement party or the surprise or something and it's all very fun behind the scenes but.
• 39:00
  The person themselves would actually rather it be a small low key affair without a whole lot of people knowing about it and without there being a lot of fanfare is there a way in which keeping positive secrets can become again a bit like the white lie you know we rationalize it on the basis of all this person is going to love love it when they find out the surprise but in actual fact we're just getting our rocks off on having a week of of planning and knowing something that they don't.
• 39:28
  I think most of the time people do this in the right way where they have an understanding of whether their partner is going to be okay with an extravagant surprise party or surprise proposal or something like that but people do get it wrong.
• 39:46
  And so you should if you're good if if you're thinking about a flash mob surprise marriage proposal for for your partner you should somehow find out whether they're into something like that because.
• 40:01
  You really don't want to put them on the spot and make them really uncomfortable in what is supposed to be such a happy moment marriage proposals is another good example one of the best predictors of whether someone says yes to a marriage proposal is whether you've discussed marriage in advance so it's not a good idea to make a marriage proposal if you've never talked about marriage at all your proposals more likely to get rejected and so that's not something you want to happen on the jumbo tron.
• 40:31
  Yeah that's right and that their ways of taking the benefits of positive secrets and applying them to negative secrets.
• 40:38
  This is the big question this is something I'm thinking about myself right now because we're also just learning about these positive secrets right now for some of the most basic questions about secrets we were only just asking them recently and so this is the question can we steal some of those benefits from positive secrets and apply them to your more prototypical negative secret and I think the answer is yes.
• 41:00
  I think that we are in control over all our secrets it just doesn't tend to feel that way it feels that way with positive secrets and so helping people understand that they have the same control over negative secrets as they do as part of secrets positive secrets to at least help to some degree making people understand it's not that the secret is controlling you although it really does feel like that.
• 41:23
  But you're in control over for this situation to also for most positive secrets not all the plan is to reveal them and so if you think about your negative secret and think well is there ever a world where I would reveal this and when and to who that might also might start might help you feel better going forward if you feel like okay I know why I'm keeping the secret I know where this eventually goes and where this will lead to.
• 41:52
  Now I feel jealous that I don't have bigger secrets like I'm sort of scouring my mind for what I what I could reveal but I'm a bit of an open book does the phase of our life affect the secrets that we have I would have thought that for those big personal life secrets a lot of those get revealed by the time you're 30.
• 42:13
  Like coming up so yes we have a good understanding of how secrecy changes throughout childhood and up through adolescence into early adulthood but after that it's a question that needs more research just like how secrecy changes and in our later adult years in our earliest of years kids can only get into so much trouble and so the kinds of secrets they keep are pretty childhood sized for lack of a better word you know wetting the pan.
• 42:43
  And sweating wetting the bed and things like that getting into some mischief or an accident those kinds of secrets don't seem to be all that harmful and perhaps because again we're talking about little small indiscretions.
• 42:58
  Where we start seeing the harm and secrecy is adolescence and that's when the concern becomes not about you know not getting scolded from parents but about being afraid to open up because of fears of rejection and being concerned about social approval and saying the wrong thing and being concerned about what other people think coming out of courses is a huge decision and very reasonably so people would be.
• 43:27
  Concerned about what are the consequences of doing that and when people accept you and and this is when secrecy is harmful essentially as soon as secrecy looks like that it becomes harmful and it's really similar to adult secrecy we keep secrets for the exact same reasons where afraid of people thinking differently of us or afraid of what people will think and we feel like we don't know.
• 43:52
  Is there a difference between teaching kids about lying and teaching kids about secrets yeah I think so and I think it's pretty easy you know for adults to say this and they'll they'll lie about their own things but to impart to their children that lying is wrong I think that is true and it's a good thing to teach children secrets don't require lies to keep and I think it's important to recognize that for everyone.
• 44:22
  If you're keeping a secret you have the right to do so and in a lot of in most of every situation even if revealing it is the right thing to do but you don't have to lie to keep a secret and I would advise anyone who has a secret to try not to you can carefully do some conversational gymnastics to answer a question while holding the truth back but without telling it out right lie.
• 44:50
  Tongue and outright lies actually some is the easiest way to keep a secret but it's also the riskiest because that like in one day be discovered.
• 44:58
  Although it is difficult doing those gymnastics as your mother found like saying well it's something that I can't tell you about that just become something that the person absolutely needs to be told doesn't it.
• 45:12
  With the biggest secrets were kind of prepared for these moments fortunately where we're kind of ready to pivot and redirect the conversation.
• 45:21
  If you really don't know what to say you could say oh I don't want to talk about this that might be a fending that might offend the other person and so a better version of that is can we talk about this later.
• 45:36
  Yeah but that's also a lie if you don't want it right and if you want.
• 45:40
  I think if you're if that's the thing you have to say at that situation you have to start considering the world where you do reveal it later it's actually a nice situation to be in because now you're like oh now I do have to talk about it like how will I say that how can I bring this up.
• 45:56
  One of the hardest parts of having a secret especially something you're starting to feel ready to reveal is you're you're waiting for that perfect moment to reveal the secret and it never comes.
• 46:10
  It's really it just really is rare that that perfect opportunity presents itself and so you could sort of force your hand in a way by making it clear that you eventually will talk about it.
• 46:23
  Children don't seem to understand the that lying is wrong innately that seems to be something that gets taught in my experience and get the deceit is a bad thing.
• 46:33
  How do you make a distinction between that and secrecy.
• 46:37
  Yeah so that's an interesting one because in in their earliest years the only way they know how to keep a secret is to physically hide their body or to try to cover up what they've done wrong.
• 46:50
  Or just lying I didn't need any cookie I didn't eat the cookies except there's like cookie carbs on their lips denial is the most sophisticated way they have to keep a secret at that point in time and it I think you the the lesson to try to draw out is something around.
• 47:13
  Lies that could hurt people or lies that hide some problem you know things like that are going to make the problems worse and so if it's a lie about cookies it's it's a little different but yeah I don't know.
• 47:31
  This seems to be a tough thing for parents that I don't have either their positions here.
• 47:37
  I don't think that the role is can hinge on the severity of the outcome.
• 47:44
  There has to be a precept at work because you don't want the child constantly trying to figure out whether or not lies okay in this case or that or a secret is okay in this case or that I think they sort of have to be blanket rules.
• 47:58
  Yeah or maybe saying something like honesty is better in helping them understand those are there's a relative sense here that honestly is the better choice.
• 48:08
  Well maybe we don't keep secrets from each other is a rule within the context of a nuclear family I mean maybe maybe you get special dispensation is a parent not to be lied to that other people don't earn.
• 48:21
  What do we know about other mammals do we know where there are the primates keep secrets.
• 48:26
  Chimps can do it and it's fascinating that they will you can see them doing this in the wild and in France to all the primatologists has some amazing stories about chimps keeping secrets and some are very mundane like hiding the location of some tasty food and some are a little bit more raunchy that involve sexism.
• 48:50
  Sex and trying to hide that essentially from from certain parties some really entertaining stories what's one of them so definitely the best one so
• 49:06
  things to know chimps have a bit more direct form of courting than humans and so a chip might to show his interest in a female might just put a interact penis on display to show his interest and
• 49:27
  that that a chip was doing this at the very moment and also chip walked by and that's that's a big no now you have to do that when the alpha chip isn't isn't around and it quickly covered it up with its hands trying to sort of conceal the the scene of the crime.
• 49:46
  What's your takeaway from all this is what's the most practical thing that you have learned from your research.
• 49:53
  The most practical thing here is if there's a secret that you feel really unsure about or is upsetting you or is bothering you.
• 50:02
  You don't have to deal with it alone you can still keep it a secret from the people that you don't want to know but it would be it's so helpful the research is so clear on this to just find someone else that you could feel comfortable talking to whether that's a trusted friend or someone removed from it all there's so much to be gained from a conversation with another person that is so hard to find on your own.
• 50:23
  Like finding a new perspective or getting validation or emotional support or advice these are so hard to find on our own but just bringing one more person in can can get us out of these negative thought loops and get us on the road to doing better and better coping.
• 50:41
  Michael it's great to talk to you as a fascinating subject thank you.
• 50:45
  Thanks for having me.
• 50:46
  Will you stick around for first eight questions so I'll pepper you with a few state questions for our subscribers if you are a subscriber stick around if you're not I'll see you next week.
• 50:55
  What would you do with 50 million bucks if you won the lottery?
• 51:00
  Yeah that's a great question I certainly would want to travel a lot but I guess I would travel extravagantly this is why this is why it's great to not have children.
• 51:10
  Yeah indeed that's the one big change when you have kids traveling becomes a lot more a lot more complicated are you a traveler where have you been?
• 51:20
  Oh yeah I'm a traveler and it's it's certainly my wife who's Australian and you know Australians are so famous for traveling she's been to like 70 something countries and so I've I've traveled too many of those countries with her not as not as many though we were just just a few weeks ago in Rwanda and Tanzania.
• 51:40
  Wow what's the prettiest of you you've ever seen.
• 51:46
  That's a tough one. Surely water is involved.
• 51:53
  Oh man I don't have a good answer to this.
• 51:58
  I don't know it's being some like large vista where you're like on a rooftop and like you're seeing the whole thing.
• 52:06
  Just making like you're just making it up but you've traveled the world.
• 52:12
  Okay what's the best thing you've seen from a plane?
• 52:15
  Okay well just just the other day we saw some elephants from the plane over over flying around Tanzania.
• 52:23
  Fantastic and sorry my phone's just ringing the what is that?
• 52:36
  Alright I'll cut that out. What's the most underrated city?
• 52:41
  Ooh that's a good one. Underrated city.
• 52:48
  I'm thinking of all the really appropriately rated cities.
• 52:53
  Yeah okay what's the most perfectly rated city?
• 52:57
  Oh I think now I'm like cheating I'm not even answering your questions anymore.
• 53:01
  I love Copenhagen. Maybe it's underrated maybe people don't know just how amazing it is.
• 53:08
  It's beautiful looking. Everything's so nicely designed because of you know Danish design.
• 53:15
  All the beers are so delicious because Danish beer is like where all the interesting stuff is happening.
• 53:23
  What's the best cuisine?
• 53:26
  It's not Filipino food. I used to think that I was so lonely that I liked all food out there.
• 53:31
  And then I had Filipino food and I was like oh man it's so true.
• 53:35
  It's so weird isn't it? I'm just so saucy about that.
• 53:38
  Why are they the odd man out in Southeast Asia when there are so many great cuisines across Southeast Asia?
• 53:45
  I don't know. I cheated by not answering your question there.
• 53:50
  I also love Danish food.
• 53:53
  Yeah I love just a whole little fish that you just drop into your mouth.
• 53:58
  I love those open bread sandwiches.
• 54:02
  Okay that's the most surprising first aid question.
• 54:05
  I lived in Copenhagen for a semester and went to Copenhagen Business School.
• 54:09
  I can't say that the culinary delights were my favorite thing.
• 54:13
  A little pickled fish.
• 54:16
  Whatever it's fine.
• 54:19
  You're surrounded by like France and even Germany I don't think I don't think you get very far selling me on a little pickled fish.
• 54:27
  What's the best ice cream flavor?
• 54:30
  I was just the other day having you can't get it anymore but this place fan Lewin in New York had a macaroni and cheese flavored ice cream.
• 54:40
  It was delicious. It was so weird tasting and so wonderful too.
• 54:45
  That's so American only like only at the United States could produce such a concoction.
• 54:52
  What's the thing you keep finding yourself looking up on Google that you keep forgetting?
• 54:59
  You know that I keep forgetting that changes my answer.
• 55:04
  Or that you don't keep forgetting.
• 55:06
  That's what you keep looking up on Google.
• 55:09
  You'd be like refreshing how many reviews are on my book.
• 55:14
  That's right because it keeps changing.
• 55:17
  Yeah.
• 55:18
  You're going to go in your own name doesn't count.
• 55:21
  I also often search for my own.
• 55:23
  I email myself a lot too.
• 55:25
  But yeah I you know sometimes you're trying to figure out how to spell something and that's a really easy thing to just put into Google.
• 55:34
  Accommodate.
• 55:35
  Man, I can never remember how many season Dems are in it.
• 55:38
  I'm always googling Accommodate.
• 55:40
  It's just stupid.
• 55:42
  Every other effect.
• 55:44
  Don't know how to spell that word.
• 55:45
  What's happening now that in 20 years people will look back on and laugh about?
• 55:50
  Ooh.
• 55:55
  laugh about.
• 55:57
  This is a good question.
• 56:04
  Deserves a good answer.
• 56:09
  The idea that maybe you would ever not be using Facebook or Uber and all these things.
• 56:15
  Maybe this will still be.
• 56:17
  I don't know if we would laugh at it there.
• 56:19
  Do you mean that people that they'll be so ubiquitous?
• 56:22
  Like people won't believe we're not using them or that they will have gone away and people believe that we would be surprised we were using them.
• 56:28
  I mean I think of the times where we like remember about like dialing up into the internet and like having to interrupt a phone call to do so.
• 56:35
  There must be things like that that will just be like can you believe that you just have to wait for a computer to turn on?
• 56:42
  Well I think I was talking the other day to a tech person and they were saying passwords like the idea that you're memorizing passwords.
• 56:49
  You get into websites.
• 56:51
  We'll see that'll be something we're telling our kids about that they won't believe.
• 56:54
  I sure hope so.
• 56:56
  Everything in our facial recognition all that stuff like the fact that I get to work and I type in a combination of letters and numbers and that we have to write them on posted notes and stick them to the front of our monitors and things like that.
• 57:07
  We'll see him cute.
• 57:09
  Totally.
• 57:10
  One other five times when I'm at the gym I somehow mess up the locker and have to get them to unlock it for me.
• 57:16
  Yeah, that won't be happening in 20 years.
• 57:19
  And lastly the time machine question if you can go anywhere in the past or future and you know you can come back if you want and you can have whatever vaccinations you want before you go.
• 57:28
  Where do you go?
• 57:30
  Oh man, I would love to be in the late 60s early 70s and just see all those amazing classic rock acts.
• 57:37
  That would be so cool.
• 57:39
  Fantastic. Michael you passed the first date.
• 57:42
  Thank you for being with us.
• 57:44
  Good to hear it.
• 57:45
  Thank you.
• 57:49
  Uncomfortable conversations is produced by Stefan Postumer.
• 57:53
  Follow me Josh Zeps on Twitter and Instagram for all the latest.
• 57:56
  May your day be fruitful, your mind humble, your enemies generous and your conversations perfectly, sparklingly, delectably, uncomfortable.