Keeping secrets is good for a person's health

A new study has found that concealing good news for a brief period can make you feel more energised.

A team of experts from Columbia University in New York City recruited over 2,500 people to participate in the study, which features a series of experiments.

Those taking part were quizzed on the various types of good news they had kept secret and their feelings related to the private information.

On average, people had 14 to 15 pieces of good news and kept five or six secret. Those reflecting on positive confidential matters felt more energised than those thinking about non-secret news.

The study's lead author, Michael Slepian, said: "Decades of research on secrecy suggest it is bad for our well-being, but this work has only examined keeping secrets that have negative implications for our lives. Is secrecy inherently bad for our well-being, or do the negative effects of secrecy tend to stem from keeping negative secrets?

"Positive secrets that people choose to keep should make them feel good, and positive emotion is a known predictor of feeling energised."

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