Research Explores Consequences Of Revealing Embarrassing Details

NPR:

Confessing embarrassing information is often better than withholding it. Research finds that people distrust withholders of details more than they dislike revealers of unsavory information.

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VEDANTAM: Well, there’s this new research that looks at how we answer embarrassing questions. Honestly, Leslie John, Kate Barasz and Michael Norton at the Harvard Business School suggest that many of us might be picking the wrong approach. So when we’re asked to fill out employee surveys or dating profiles, we often choose not to answer embarrassing questions. But it turns out, we underestimate the effect this has on other people’s opinions of us. In one experiment, John and her colleagues asked people to choose between two prospective dating partners. One of them declines to answer whether he or she has ever hidden a sexually transmitted disease from a dating partner. This person is called a withholder because he or she is withholding information. The other person reveals all kind of unsavory things about themselves, and volunteers are then asked which person they would prefer to date.

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