Imagine you are filling out a job application and you encounter a question that to answer truthfully would require divulging something unsavoury about yourself. For example, if you were asked to reveal your less-than-stellar college grades, would you answer the question?
When in the awkward position of being asked to reveal our warts, people are, understandably, often reluctant. But lots of us also feel uncomfortable telling an outright lie. As a result, most of us deal with this situation by avoiding answering the question at all. Does this strategy truly pay off? How do we come across when we refuse to answer sensitive questions? Do we come across better or worse than if we simply "came clean" and revealed our faults?
Read more: We're just like animals when it comes to finding a date
In research published in 2016 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, my collaborators Kate Barasz, Michael Norton and I asked people for their impressions of those who choose to be tight-lipped. In one series of experiments, research participants told us which of two eligible mates they'd rather date. We showed our participants the potential mates' answers to several multiple-choice questions.
But these weren't just any questions. We chose questions that, if answered, would reveal the respondent's indiscretions; such as: "Have you ever neglected to tell a partner about an STD you are suffering from?" The potential mates chose from one of five response options: never, once; sometimes; frequently; or choose not to answer.
We carefully constructed the potential mates' answers in order to test how answering – as opposed to not answering – affected how they came across to our study participants. Specifically, one of the potential dates – the "revealer" – said that they frequently engage in all of the shady activities they were polled about. Surely it can't get worse than this. Or can it? The other potential date – the "hider" – chose not to answer half of the questions (and for the answered questions, gave the same response as the revealer).
In telling us who they would prefer to date, our study participants essentially answered this question: would you rather date someone who freely admits to being an inordinately shady human being, or someone who sometimes abstains from answering personal questions?
Which person would people prefer to date: a hider or a revealer? It shocked us that 64 per cent of our respondents chose the revealer over the hider. And it's not just in dating that people prefer revealers to hiders. When asked which of two job candidates they would rather hire – one forthcoming about having received an F grade in an exam, the other abstaining from answering the job application's question about grades – people choose the former.
Now, presumably, people would be much less interested in hiring a flunker than a straight A student; the key point is that when faced with a direct question, opting out of answering can be even worse than revealing the worst possible answer. This is not to say we should, unprompted, reveal our deepest and darkest secrets in order to impress people. Our research shows that, at least in situations where disclosure is expected – in response to a direct question, for example – failing to comply is unwise.
Why is this so? We're hard-wired to feel a sense of kinship towards those who disclose things about themselves. And there are very good reasons for this: self-disclosure is a basic building block for intimacy, a fundamental human need. Those who explicitly abstain from this activity are viewed as circumspect, and hence, avoided. Our preference for revealers is so strong that it can lead us to favour those who admit the worst of faults, relative to those who simply abstain from disclosure.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
