Everyone has secrets - and now we might know just how many.

每个人都有秘密，现在我们或许知道了你究竟有几个秘密。

A new study led by professor of management at Columbia Business School Michael Slepian, has looked into the secret-keeping habits of thousands of people - as well as examining a grand total of 13,000 secrets between them.

哥伦比亚商学院管理学教授迈克尔•斯莱皮恩带头开展了一项新研究，调查了数千人的保密习惯，并挖掘出受访者大约1.3万个秘密。

The research, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology¹, looked at the secrets collected over the course of 10 previous studies to come up with 38 common categories, ranging from cheating on a test to hiding their sexuality to sleeping with another's spouse².

研究结果发表在《人格与社会心理学》杂志上，该团队分析了此前10项研究中收集的秘密，然后将其分为38种常见的类型，从考试作弊到隐瞒性取向与偷情。

After breaking down the categories, the researches asked 2,000 participants to number the common secrets they are keeping that fit into the categories.

分类后，研究人员邀请2000名受访者将他们的秘密对号入座。

In the end, they found that the average person was carrying 13 of the 38 secrets at any one time. They also discovered that five of those 13 secrets have never been shared with another person.

最后，研究人员发现，普通人在任何时候都有38类秘密中的13种。他们还发现，这13种秘密中有5种从未与人分享过。

The most commonly held secrets involved what researchers termed 'extra-relational thoughts', as well as sexual behavior, lying, and romantic desire. The researchers defined a secret as something they intended to keep from others.

最常见的秘密就是研究人员所说的 "非常关系"，还有性行为、说谎和浪漫欲望。研究人员把秘密定义为人们不想让别人知道的事情。

The common secrets that people were less likely to keep to themselves were abortion³, marriage proposals and sexual orientation⁴.

人们不太可能保守的秘密是堕胎、求婚和性取向。

In addition to the number and types of secrets people keep, the researchers also looked into the way keeping them affects behavior and health.

除了秘密的数量和类型外，研究团队还研究了保密对个人行为和健康的影响。

People become more concerned about the secrets they are keeping when they are alone than when actively⁵ hiding them from people they are interacting with.

相比与人交流时主动保密，人们在独处时更担忧自己的秘密。

He added that when people were thinking about their secrets, they also 'acted as if they were burdened by physical weight.'

他补充说，当人们在想自己的秘密时，他们 "表现得像是被身体的负重所拖累"。

Slepian suggests that the reason for this powerful effect is its presence as a goal that is never truly accomplished⁶.

斯莱皮恩认为，这种强大影响的原因是秘密的存在好像一个从未真正实现的目标。

'You might encounter a conversation where you have to conceal⁷ it, but there might always be future moments down the road where you have to conceal again,' he said.

他说：“你可能会遇到一段你不得不隐瞒的谈话，但是一段时间之后，你可能不得不再次隐瞒一段谈话。”

Like other studies before it, the researchers also found that keeping secrets can have detrimental⁸ consequences for a person's well-being⁹. In particular, they examined how participants reported feeling inauthentic when they mused¹⁰ on the secrets that burdened them.

与之前的其他研究一样，研究人员也发现，保守秘密会对一个人的幸福生活产生不利影响。他们还特别研究了受访者们沉思那些让自己费心的秘密时的那种不真实感。

The only way to keep yourself from feeling these negative thoughts, Slepian believes, is to just think about secrets less - given the study found that the secrets themselves didn't lower well-being, but rather the thought of them did.

斯莱皮恩认为，让自己不去感受这些消极想法的唯一方法就是尽量少地去考虑秘密。因为研究发现，导致幸福感降低的是人们对秘密的想法，而不是这些秘密本身。