The cognitive consequences of secrecy.

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Four research paradigms explored links from secrecy to the suppression and intrusive recurrence of secret thoughts. In Study I, keeping a word secret enhanced cognitive accessibility of the word on a Stroop color-naming task. Study 2 revealed that secret memory topics were recalled earlier than topics about which a lie or the truth was told. Study 3 showed that when participants were keeping secrets, their ratings ofsuppression and intrusive thinking ofthe secret became positively correlated. Study 4 participants rated 50 everyday topics for intrusiveness, suppression, and secrecy. Across topics, positive mean within-subject correlations were found among these variables.