"The instinct to pour scorn on attention seekers may be masking a deeper public-health problem: chronic concealment. For much of my career as an academic I made a living scolding people about privacy. I lectured on digital hygiene, warned audiences about the ways social media amplifies folly, and played the role of the wary scientist: don't put your passwords in a document, don't take quizzes that leak your intimate preferences, don't broadcast things you can't take back."
"When I stepped back to look at the broader patterns that have emerged from research not just on privacy but on disclosure, trust and health I saw something surprising. The consistent signal wasn't that humans are inveterate oversharers; it was that we are underexposing the things that matter. We were treating silence as a default virtue. But that default has costs."
"In a study we called What Hiding Reveals, my team and I gave people an awkward but revealing choice: imagine you're going to date one of two people, but you can ask each a set of questions. One candidate answers frankly (even admitting painful, stigmatised facts, like drug use or cheating on their taxes); the other refuses to answer. Which would you choose? Time and again, across contexts dating, hiring, sitting next to someone on the subway people picked the revealer."
Social norms often mock oversharing on social media, yet research reveals a paradox: excessive silence poses greater risks than disclosure. Withheld anxieties, unspoken family histories, and workplace omissions create brittleness in relationships and institutions. An academic who previously lectured on privacy restrictions experienced cognitive dissonance between professional warnings and personal behavior. Upon examining research on disclosure, trust, and health, a surprising pattern emerged: humans underexpose matters that genuinely matter rather than overshare. Experiments demonstrated that across contexts—dating, hiring, social interactions—people consistently prefer those who answer questions frankly, even admitting stigmatized facts, over those who refuse disclosure. This preference stems not from enjoying negative information but from recognizing that transparency builds trust and connection.
#disclosure-and-transparency #trust-and-relationships #public-health #social-silence #privacy-paradox
Read at www.theguardian.com
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