This episode is supported by Prudential.
*Voice of male narrator*
"My lord. I love you:"
"And durst commend a secret to your ear."
"Much weightier than this work."
Aside from Shakespeare's "Old English" flair
those lines sound a lot like conventional wisdom.
Secrets can be heavy
Even today, we talk about how secrets can weigh us down.
But is that just a saying?
Or does it come from real, physical experience?
In 2012,
researchers developed a series of studies to test that metaphor:
"Secrets can weigh us down."
This first part asked people to recall and write
either a small or large personal secret.
Then they were asked to judge the sturdiness of a table,
the durability of a water bottle,
the temperature of a park,
and the steepness of a hill shown face-on.
But, everything except the hill was a distraction.
Participants who wrote about big secrets
judged the hill as significantly steeper
than those who wrote about small secrets.
And that matters
because we know when people are carrying a heavy, physical weight
they judge physical activities as being more difficult.
It seems like this is also the case when you're carrying
a heavy mental weight.
In the second part
participants who were asked to hide a big secret
overestimated the difficulty of a task.
Instead of throwing a ball at a target
they kept throwing it over
suggesting that they perceived the target as further away.
Or that they just had really terrible aim!
And when people were asked to consider a really big secret
"How much do you think about your secret?"
"How much does it bother you?"
Those who scored as more burdened
rated tasks that required physical effort
like walking a dog
as more difficult.
So that metaphor about secrets weighing us down
may actually be based in reality.
Or...is it?
Other scientists tried to replicate the first part.
Remember that one where people judged the steepness of a hill?
And after two attempts, they didn't get the same results.
They found no correlation between how a big a lie was
and how steep people judged the hill to be.
Now what?!
Well, some of those original researchers were like:
*Music*
"Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down"
"Never gonna run around and desert you."
*Music Ends*
So last year, they did another study.
Now, instead of just looking at the size of a secret
they also looked at how burdensome or preoccupying
the secret was.
When people were divided by the burden of their secret
those who had a higher burden did perceive
physical tasks as being more difficult.
They rated the hill as steeper.
So after all of this
it seems like - yeah, secrets can weigh us down.
But only if we let them.
If we keep secrets that we perceive as burdensome
or difficult to keep
then it's really mentally challenging.
We might as well go about our lives behaving
as if we're carrying around a physical weight.
But just how much does a secret weigh?
Well, the weight of a brain cell in your memory centre
or the weight of electrons carrying a confidential email
probably won't make a difference to your life.
After all, the internet only weighs as much as a strawberry.
The real question is:
"What does a mental burden weigh?"
And that's pretty burdensome to answer.
Let me know your thoughts!
Do you carry around a secret
that weighs heavier on you than others may expect?
I'll see you down in the comments.
Thanks to Prudential for sponsoring this episode.
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