Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
The University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2020 Oct;46(10):1411-1427. doi: 10.1177/0146167219895017. Epub 2020 Feb 28.
Having secrets on the mind is associated with lower well-being, and a common view of secrets is that people work to suppress and avoid them-but might people actually want to think about their secrets? Four studies examining more than 11,000 real-world secrets found that the answer depends on the importance of the secret: People generally seek to engage with thoughts of secrets and seek to suppress thoughts of secrets. Inconsistent with an ironic process account, adopting the strategy to suppress thoughts of a secret was not related to a tendency to think about the secret. Instead, adopting the strategy to engage with thoughts of a secret was related the tendency to think about the secret. Moreover, the temporal focus of one's thoughts moderated the relationship between mind-wandering to the secret and well-being, with a focus on the past exacerbating a harmful link. These results suggest that people do not universally seek to suppress their secrets; they also seek to engage with them, although not always effectively.
心中有秘密与幸福感较低有关，人们普遍认为应该抑制和避免秘密——但人们是否真的会想要思考自己的秘密呢？四项研究调查了超过 11000 个真实的秘密，发现答案取决于秘密的重要性：人们通常试图关注秘密的想法，并试图抑制对秘密的想法。这与讽刺过程的观点不一致，即采用抑制秘密想法的策略与思考秘密的倾向无关。相反，采用关注秘密想法的策略与思考秘密的倾向有关。此外，一个人思想的时间焦点调节了秘密思维与幸福感之间的关系，关注过去会加剧这种有害的联系。这些结果表明，人们并不普遍寻求抑制自己的秘密；他们也会试图关注它们，尽管并不总是有效。
