Abstract
Secrecy, privacy, confidentiality, concealment, disclosure, and gossip all involve sharing and withholding access to information. However, existing theories do not account for the fundamental similarity between these concepts. Accordingly, it is unclear when sharing and withholding access to information will have positive or negative effects and why these effects might occur. We argue that these problems can be addressed by conceptualizing these phenomena more broadly as different kinds of information-access regulation. Furthermore, we outline a social-identity theory of information-access regulation (SITIAR) that proposes that information-access regulation shapes shared social identity, explaining why people who have access to information feel a sense of togetherness with others who have the same access and a sense of separation from those who do not. This theoretical framework unifies diverse findings across disparate lines of research and generates a number of novel predictions about how information-access regulation affects individuals and groups.
Everyone keeps secrets (Slepian et al., 2017). People keep information from their partners (Uysal et al., 2012), from their parents (Frijns et al., 2005), from family and friends (Major & Gramzow, 1999), from those outside their profession (Wolfe et al., 2018), and from society as a whole (Cole et al., 1996). In fact, many people would actually prefer that more of their information remained secret—for example, a majority of Americans want to do more to protect their online privacy (Pew Research Center, 2014). Likewise, as the U.S. government becomes increasingly focused on maintaining control over information access, trillions of new pages of text are classified each year (Farrow, 2013), and in the corporate world, protecting confidential information is vitally important for organizations (Gatzlaff & McCullough, 2010; Ponemon Institute, 2019). Moreover, confidentiality is an integral part of clinical relationships between medical professionals and patients (American Medical Association, 2020; American Psychological Association, 2017), as well as between lawyers and clients (American Bar Association, 2018). Accordingly, control over access to information is a fundamental part of social life, woven into interactions from the interpersonal to the multinational.
The ubiquity of withholding and sharing of information makes it an interesting candidate for psychological study and for this reason has spawned several lines of research in the social sciences that address related issues from secrecy and self-disclosure to confidentiality and gossip. Unfortunately, however, there is no extant theoretical framework that encompasses all of these processes. Accordingly, the empirical literature is full of seemingly contradictory results. Sometimes the act of withholding access to information leads to positive outcomes for individuals and groups. For example, groups that are defined by collective secrecy such as secret societies, “skunkworks,” and intelligence agencies tend to be cohesive, which is a desirable state for groups that must work toward collective ends (Costas & Grey, 2014, 2016; Courpasson & Younes, 2018; Fine & Holyfield, 1996). Likewise, in a classic demonstration of the power of shared information access to create social closeness, Wegner and colleagues (1994) found that couples playing “footsie” under a table in the presence of another couple were more attracted to their partner when this was secret than when it was not. Moreover, maintaining personal privacy is considered to be vital for self-definition because it allows for the development of individuality (Altman, 1975; Westin, 1967).
However, sometimes withholding access to information can have negative effects. Keeping secrets creates mental stress and taxes cognitive resources, leading to negative health outcomes (Frijns et al., 2005; Lane & Wegner, 1995; Pennebaker et al., 1989). Likewise, concealment has a range of negative side effects, such as lower relationship well-being (Finkenauer et al., 2009; Uysal et al., 2012), lower self-esteem, increased depressive symptoms, higher stress, and increased aggressive behavior (Frijns et al., 2005). Moreover, concealment negatively affects people with a stigmatized identity, medical condition, or profession. Accordingly, gay men who conceal their sexual identity have a higher chance of physical illness (Cole et al., 1996), people with brain damage and epilepsy who conceal this from others report increased anxiety and greater social isolation (Jones et al., 2012; Schneider & Conrad, 1980), and sex workers often struggle with a sense that they need to conceal the nature of their work from outsiders (Wolfe et al., 2018).
Summarizing these varied empirical findings, we note that in some cases keeping information from other people leads to social closeness and group cohesion and in other cases leads to stress, isolation, and reduced well-being. However, current theories of secrecy, privacy, confidentiality, concealment, and gossip cannot account for these divergent outcomes. To address this conundrum, in the current article we outline a social-identity theory of information-access regulation (SITIAR) that draws on the social-identity approach (Tajfel & Turner, 1979; J. C. Turner et al., 1987) to provide an integrative explanation of how sharing and withholding information affects individuals and groups.
SITIAR
Information-access regulation is any process by which access to information is intentionally withheld from others or shared with the intention that it should be withheld from a third party. Examples include secrecy, informational privacy, confidentiality, concealment, and some forms of disclosure and gossip (i.e., those in which information is shared with the assumption that it should be kept from a third party). Reviewing the empirical and theoretical research that involves information-access-regulation processes reveals three key themes: First, keeping information from others creates boundaries around people (Altman, 1975; Costas & Grey, 2016; Gluckman, 1963, 1968; Harwood et al., 2014; Petronio, 2015; Petronio & Child, 2020; Petronio et al., 1998; Simmel, 1908); second, people inside these boundaries feel a sense of cohesion or social closeness (Bosson et al., 2006; Courpasson & Younes, 2018; De Backer et al., 2016; N. Elias & Scotson, 1994; Fine & Holyfield, 1996; Weaver & Bosson, 2011; Wegner et al., 1994); and third, keeping information from other people can lead to reduced well-being (Cole et al., 1996; Finkenauer et al., 2009; Frijns et al., 2005; Lane & Wegner, 1995; Pennebaker, 1989; Pennebaker et al., 1989; Slepian et al., 2012; Uysal et al., 2012).
These findings can be explained by SITIAR, which is a theory built on the social-identity approach—a theoretical framework that encompasses social-identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) and self-categorization theory (J. C. Turner et al., 1987). According to this perspective, self-categorization (perceiving oneself as belonging to a social category) entails a process of self-stereotyping—that is, seeing oneself as similar to the category prototype (and thus to others who belong to the same category) but also as different from those outside the category (J. C. Turner, 1982, 1985). People who self-categorize as members of the same group therefore have a shared social identity with others in the group that affects how they perceive and act in the world and how they relate to others. This sense of shared social identity is strengthened as a function of identification, which is the extent to which a given social category is psychologically meaningful for its members (i.e., the extent to which it defines their self-concept; Oakes et al., 1994). SITIAR makes use of this theoretical perspective to explain how information-access regulation leads to a range of positive and negative effects for individuals and groups.
Below, we discuss how SITIAR accounts for the key themes that are present in diverse research on information-access regulation. Moreover, we describe a number of novel predictions that the theory makes about how information-access regulation affects individual and group outcomes through the core mechanism of shaping shared social identity.
Theme 1: Keeping information from others creates boundaries
SITIAR proposes that people self-categorize on the basis of who is given access to information and that this cognitive process creates boundaries around those who are given access. Specifically, self-categorization theory posits that people will perceive themselves as belonging to a social category to the extent that perceived intercategory differences outweigh intracategory differences. This ratio is known as the metacontrast principle (J. C. Turner, 1985). Applying this principle to information-access regulation, when individuals withhold information from other people, they increase the difference between themselves and those others. This difference should make it harder for these individuals to perceive themselves as sharing social identity with those others. Accordingly, SITIAR predicts that withholding information from others will create a barrier to shared social identity between the withholder and those from whom the information is withheld. This is formalized in the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1: Withholding information will reduce shared social identity between those who have access to the information and those who do not.
The metacontrast principle can also be used to understand the effect of sharing information. Specifically, to the extent that information is shared rather than withheld, it should increase shared social identity between the sharer and receiver by reducing the perceived difference between them. Examples of such processes include knowledge transfer and information-sharing at the group level (Argote & Ingram, 2000; Darr et al., 1995; Epple et al., 1996; Levine et al., 2000; Powell et al., 1996), as well as interpersonal disclosure (MacReady et al., 2011; Rimé, 2009). SITIAR predicts that these processes should increase shared identity between those involved relative to withholding. Moreover, this effect should be stronger when information-sharing is bounded—that is, when there is a third party or parties from whom the information is to be withheld. Examples of such processes include shared secrecy, group privacy, and confidentiality. In these cases, both sides of the metacontrast ratio are affected simultaneously because difference is reduced between those given access and increased between those who are given access and those who are not.
Furthermore, information access may sometimes be partially bounded, as in the case of one person sharing information with another when the recipient is unaware that there is a third party from whom the information is supposed to be withheld. In this case, both sharer and recipient should feel a sense of shared social identity with each other on the basis of having access to the same information. The sharer should also feel that they and the receiver are different from the third party, further increasing the sharer’s sense of shared social identity with the receiver. However, the receiver is unaware of the third party and so would not feel any more connected to the sharer than if the information-sharing were fully unbounded. In other words, SITIAR predicts that, relative to withholding, partially bounded information access will increase shared social identity more than unbounded information access, but not as much as fully bounded information access.
To summarize, SITIAR predicts that unbounded access to (vs. withholding of) information should increase shared social identity because it reduces perceived differences between those involved. However, these effects are predicted to be stronger for the sharer in partially bounded information access, and stronger for all parties involved in fully bounded access, because excluding others as a group maximizes the perceived differences between those given access and those who are not.
Hypothesis 2: Sharing (vs. withholding) information will increase shared social identity between those given access, but this effect will be stronger for partially bounded sharing and strongest for fully bounded sharing.
Theme 2: People inside the boundary feel a sense of social cohesion
The second theme identified across various lines of research on information-access regulation is that people who share access to information that is withheld from others feel a sense of social closeness with one another. SITIAR proposes that this sense of togetherness can be conceptualized as shared social identity that leads to a sense of “us-ness.” A novel prediction that follows from this analysis is that groups who share information among their members but keep it from outsiders should be more effective at acting collectively. This is because shared social identity is a “social glue” that keeps groups together, enhancing collective performance across a variety of domains (Ellemers et al., 1997; S. A. Haslam, 2001; Van Vugt & Hart, 2004). For example, a sense of shared group membership leads to more effective communication (Greenaway, Wright, et al., 2015). Likewise, people tend to trust in-group members more than out-group members (Cruwys et al., 2020; Foddy et al., 2009) and are more willing to work actively on behalf of in-group causes than out-group causes (Cakal et al., 2011; Van Zomeren et al., 2008). Accordingly, SITIAR predicts that to the extent that information-access regulation fully encompasses a group, it should enhance shared social identity within the group, thus improving the group’s functioning.
Hypothesis 3a: Information-access regulation that encompasses a group will improve group functioning by increasing shared social identity among group members.
However, sometimes information-access regulation intersects or “cuts across” existing group boundaries. For example, in organizations confidentiality policies sometimes bar certain employees from accessing information. In such cases, SITIAR predicts that although information-access regulation will increase shared social identity among the subgroup of people who are given access to the information (as in Hypothesis 2), it will decrease shared social identity among the group as a whole. Returning to the metacontrast principle, this is because intragroup information-access regulation increases differences between group members, reducing the extent to which members are likely to experience shared identity with the group. As a result of this compromised sense of shared identity, group functioning should be negatively affected (e.g., by reducing communication quality, trust, and productivity; S. A. Haslam, 2001).
Hypothesis 3b: Information-access regulation that intersects or cuts across a group will worsen group functioning by reducing shared social identity among group members.
Theme 3: Keeping information from others can reduce well-being
SITIAR proposes that the negative effects of individual information-access regulation on well-being can be understood in part as resulting from reduced shared social identity. A large body of evidence supports the idea that a sense of shared social identity is important for mental and physical health because it fulfills psychological needs and is a platform for access to social-psychological resources (Greenaway et al., 2016; Jetten et al., 2012, 2017). Likewise, shared social identity is associated with increased social support (Jetten et al., 2012), reduced stress (Branscombe et al., 1999; S. A. Haslam et al., 2005), increased personal control (Greenaway et al., 2016; Greenaway, Haslam, et al., 2015), reduced depression (Sani et al., 2015), less paranoid thinking (Greenaway et al., 2019), improved recovery from strokes (C. Haslam et al., 2008), better physical health (Steffens et al., 2021), and reduced mortality (Steffens et al., 2016). Thus, we expect that to the extent that information-access regulation increases a sense of shared social identity among those given access to information, it should improve their mental and physical well-being.
Hypothesis 4a: Information-access regulation that encompasses a group will improve individual well-being by increasing shared social identity among group members.
Note, however, that the beneficial effect of information-access regulation on individual well-being is predicated on shared social identity. Accordingly, when information-access regulation increases the salience of a shared identity (e.g., when people are part of a group in which everyone is given the same confidential information), this may have a range of positive consequences for personal well-being. However, when information-access regulation causes an individual’s personal identity to become salient, as in the case of individual privacy, secrecy, and concealment, it may have a negative effect on well-being by reducing the resources—psychological or otherwise—provided by groups. This is because identity salience tends to be functionally antagonistic, such that as one identity becomes salient others will typically become less salient (J. C. Turner et al., 1987). In other words, individual secrecy, privacy, and concealment may reduce the benefits of existing group memberships by making personal identity salient at the expense of shared social identity, thus reducing well-being. This may help to explain the burden of secrecy and concealment found in previous research because individual information-access regulation creates a barrier not only between the individual and other people in general but also between the individual and those with whom they might previously have felt a sense of connection.
Hypothesis 4b: Information-access regulation that encompasses a single individual (such as individual secrecy, concealment, or informational privacy) will compromise individual well-being by reducing a sense of shared social identity with others.
Although SITIAR predicts that individual information-access regulation will have a negative impact on well-being by reducing shared social identity, it may also have opposing effects that mean the overall effect on well-being is attenuated. For example, to the degree that individual information-access regulation helps people avoid censure or protect their reputation, it may benefit well-being via other channels (e.g., Bosson et al., 2012; McDonald et al., 2020). Likewise, although SITIAR does not formally model the reaction of those with whom information is shared versus withheld, this is likely to play a role in the degree to which individual information-access regulation affects well-being. Although Hypothesis 4a predicts a positive indirect effect of sharing (vs. withholding) on well-being via increased shared social identity, negative reactions from others may attenuate this effect. Indeed, being rejected after revealing a secret can lead the sharer to construct a negative self-image (Kelly & McKillop, 1996). Moreover, Laurenceau et al. (1998) found that the positive effects of disclosure on intimacy are affected by perceived partner responsiveness, and Lepore et al. (2000) found that the beneficial effect of disclosure in reducing stress was attenuated when the disclosure was invalidated by a confederate. However, although the direct effect of information-access regulation on individual well-being may be attenuated in such cases, we propose that it will still influence well-being indirectly via a sense of shared social identity.
Theoretical and Practical Implications
A strength of SITIAR is that it unites a number of psychological phenomena from disparate lines of research into the construct of information-access regulation. Although researchers have noted similarities between secrecy, privacy, confidentiality, concealment, and gossip (Costas & Grey, 2016; Margulis, 2003b; Marx, 2016; Smith et al., 2011; Wolfe et al., 2018), there is no extant theory that articulates this commonality. The lack of conceptual clarity around these constructs has been identified as a problem across disciplines (Kniffin & Wilson, 2010; Margulis, 2003a; Michelson et al., 2010), and researchers have recognized that there is a need for integrated theoretical perspectives that make predictions across multiple levels of analysis (i.e., individual, interpersonal, group, and intergroup; Smith et al., 2011). By focusing on information-access regulation more broadly and by utilizing a social-identity perspective that can account for multiple levels of analysis, SITIAR helps to address these gaps in the literature. Furthermore, SITIAR has a number of implications for understanding specific phenomena within the individual lines of research.
Secrecy
Psychological research has generally focused on interpersonal secrecy, such as when an individual or dyad conceals a secret from others. However, little is known about how sharing or withholding secrets affects group psychology. Providing one potential answer, sociological research and theorizing about group secrecy has articulated how such processes create, reinforce, or disrupt social forms (Costas & Grey, 2014, 2016; Simmel, 1908). However, the psychological mechanisms and outcomes of these effects have not been explored. SITIAR integrates these accounts, proposing that the effects of secrecy on groups can be conceptualized psychologically in terms of shared social identity and that their downstream consequences can be predicted on the basis of the social-identity perspective. Moreover, joining this sociological analysis of secrecy to the social-identity literature in this way creates fertile ground for new research. For example, extending the metacontrast principle to an intergroup context, we might predict that group functioning will be at its peak when secrecy encompasses the whole in-group and lowest when it splits the in-group and encompasses out-group members. Accordingly, SITIAR can be used to make specific, unique predictions about how secrecy affects group dynamics.
SITIAR also contributes to our understanding of the effects of secrecy on individuals. There is a substantial body of research on the impact of keeping secrets, demonstrating that secrecy leads to negative outcomes (Slepian et al., 2012, 2015). However, keeping other people’s secrets has the additional effect of increasing interpersonal intimacy (Slepian & Greenaway, 2018). These countervailing pathways by which secrecy affects individuals can be accounted for by SITIAR, which conceptualizes the burden of secrecy as an outcome of reduced shared social identity with those who are not allowed to know the secret and increased intimacy related to greater shared social identity with those who are allowed to know. Moreover, SITIAR moves beyond interpersonal processes to explain how collective secrecy might affect individuals. For example, an interpersonal perspective cannot explain how observing some group members keeping secrets from others might affect the observer. SITIAR would predict that to the extent that this situation reduced shared social identity, this should have negative effects for the observer and the group. On the other hand, keeping secrets as a group would be expected to have individual and group benefits to the degree that it increases shared social identity. Accordingly, SITIAR allows for a richer understanding of how shared secrecy can be a benefit in addition to a burden.
Privacy
Maintaining personal privacy is considered to be good for a range of outcomes from well-being (Altman, 1975; Margulis, 2003a, 2003b; Westin, 1967) to organizational functioning (Alge et al., 2006). However, this literature has focused on the benefits of maintaining privacy in the face of external threats, not on the effects of extending privacy to others. Addressing this gap in the literature, SITIAR predicts that when individual privacy is willingly extended to others, this will have positive effects for individuals by fostering shared social identity with those given access to the private information. In other words, there may be benefits to expanding versus maintaining individual privacy that have not been explored in the psychological literature. Moreover, although there is some research into collective privacy (Petronio & Child, 2020), the outcomes of this process have not been fully explored (Stuart et al., 2019). For example, communication-privacy-management theory (Petronio, 2015; Petronio & Child, 2020) articulates how privacy forms boundaries around individuals, dyads, and groups. However, this theoretical perspective does not articulate how these boundaries might affect collective outcomes. Accordingly, SITIAR contributes to our understanding of collective privacy by providing a psychological mechanism by which this process might affect those involved.
Confidentiality
Confidentiality has generally been conceptualized as an ethical issue in psychological research (Hook & Cleveland, 1999; Rae et al., 2002; Robinson, 1991; Wartenberg & Thompson, 2010) and thus has not been studied as a social-psychological phenomenon that might shape individual outcomes and group dynamics. SITIAR opens the door for a new conceptualization of confidentiality, suggesting that this process may affect group dynamics by shaping the formation of shared social identity. This is particularly relevant for organizations: We predict that compartmentalization will lead to divergent effects for group dynamics depending on who in the group is allowed information access. Indeed, similar effects have been found by researchers who have studied organizational fault lines (Lau & Murnighan, 1998). It also has implications for clinicians, given that encouraging clients to share confidential information with trusted others might lead to positive psychological and physiological outcomes through the formation of shared social identity. For example, SITIAR provides a novel explanation of why maintaining confidentiality is important for the therapeutic alliance between client and therapist (Duncan et al., 2012; Sullivan et al., 2002). Specifically, it suggests that maintaining confidentiality may reinforce the salience of the relationship, strengthening shared identity, whereas breaching confidentiality may prevent the client from sharing sensitive information in the future, impeding shared social identity and the therapeutic process more generally (C. Haslam et al., 2008).
Disclosure
Although SITIAR focuses mainly on information-access regulation, it also makes predictions about how information-sharing processes more generally affects individuals and groups. Accordingly, it can be used to make unique predictions about the effects of disclosure. For example, SITIAR predicts that the positive effects of disclosure to others (MacReady et al., 2011; Rimé, 2009) will depend on the extent to which sharing is bounded. In other words, when disclosure is “open-ended” (i.e., kept from no one), it will have less of an effect on shared social identity and therefore well-being than if the information is disclosed on the condition that it is kept secret collectively. Furthermore, disclosure has been found to improve group performance (F. G. Elias et al., 1989). SITIAR contributes to our understanding of this phenomenon by predicting that this effect will be moderated by the specific pattern of disclosure, such that the effect of bounded disclosure will be more powerful for improving group dynamics than unbounded disclosure and that bounded disclosure to only half the group will impair group dynamics. This suggestion that disclosure will be optimal for group dynamics when it encompasses the whole group but is kept from outsiders is consistent with evidence that personal disclosure can be a powerful mechanism for building shared team identity in sport (Dunn & Holt, 2004; S. A. Haslam et al., 2020).
Gossip
Like shared social identity, gossip has been described as a social glue (Peters et al., 2017; M. M. Turner et al., 2003). SITIAR suggests that this similarity is not just superficial because gossip may have an important social function in terms of fostering shared social identity. Like other kinds of information-access regulation, gossip creates boundaries around people (De Backer et al., 2016; Gelles, 1989; Gluckman, 1963, 1968; Hannerz, 1967; Michelson et al., 2010; Soeters & van Iterson, 2002; Suls, 1977) and promotes cohesion and social closeness between gossipers (Bosson et al., 2006; De Backer et al., 2016; N. Elias & Scotson, 1994; Kniffin & Wilson, 2010; Weaver & Bosson, 2011). SITIAR predicts that gossip will be good for group processes to the extent that it reinforces rather than dilutes a group’s boundaries, as is the case when gossip about outsiders is shared equally within the group. As with disclosure, SITIAR also makes the novel prediction that the boundedness of gossip will determine its effect on those involved. Moreover, SITIAR predicts that gossiping, particularly when it is bounded, is likely to be good for the well-being of the sharer and recipient (but not necessarily the target).
Considering alternative accounts
The foregoing sections have described the main hypotheses of SITIAR that articulate how information-access regulation affects individual and group outcomes through a core process of increasing or reducing shared social identity. In addition to this unifying mechanism, there are a number of alternative processes suggested by disparate lines of research on information-access regulation. These processes appear to cluster loosely at individual, interpersonal, and group levels. By discussing these alternative processes, we aim to show how SITIAR contributes to our understanding of information-access regulation in addition to these existing accounts.
Individual mechanisms
Individual accounts of information-access-regulation effects have centered on two clusters of processes: one cognitive and the other more emotional. The first of these is evidenced in research on secrecy and concealment that suggests that such processes drain cognitive resources (Lane & Wegner, 1995; Slepian et al., 2015). Specifically, keeping secrets is effortful because it leads to preoccupation with the secret (Lane & Wegner, 1995), as with other forms of thought suppression (Wegner et al., 1987). This preoccupation in turn leads to secrecy being experienced as a “burden” by individuals (Slepian et al., 2012; Slepian & Greenaway, 2018), which can be relieved by revealing secrets (Slepian et al., 2014). Moreover, attempts at thought suppression can lead to psychological distress (Major & Gramzow, 1999).
Another individual mechanism focuses on the fulfillment of psychological needs. According to this perspective, keeping information from others reduces basic needs such as autonomy, competence, and relatedness (Uysal et al., 2012). Moreover, secrecy makes the secret-keeper feel inauthentic (McDonald et al., 2020), ashamed (Karpel, 1980; Kelly & McKillop, 1996; Slepian & Bastian, 2017; Slepian et al., 2020), and lacking in coherence (Bosson et al., 2012). On the other hand, disclosing to others fulfills psychological needs. For example, disclosure can lead to a sense of sense-making, closure, and mastery (Kelly & McKillop, 1996; Lepore et al., 2000; MacReady et al., 2011; Páez et al., 1999; Pennebaker, 1989, 2003). In short, keeping information from others is cognitively preoccupying and undermines the fulfillment of basic psychological needs to feel capable and coherent—processes that negatively affect well-being.
Interpersonal mechanisms
Another class of mechanism focuses on the effects of information-access-regulation processes on interpersonal dynamics. For example, withholding information from others can make those others feel excluded or ostracized (Bok, 1983; Finkenauer et al., 2009). On the other hand, sharing information and emotions with others increases social closeness, emotional contagion, and intimacy (Altman & Taylor, 1973; Christophe & Rimé, 1997; Curci & Bellelli, 2004; Dunbar, 2004; Kirshner et al., 1978; Rimé et al., 1998; Slepian & Greenaway, 2018; Vangelisti, 1994). For example, people who engage in intimate disclosures tend to be liked more than people who disclose less, and those who disclose tend to like their listeners (Collins & Miller, 1994). Disclosure also ultimately predicts increased relationship intimacy (Laurenceau et al., 1998). Furthermore, regulating information access to include others has been argued to increase intimacy because it leads to other-focused repetitive thinking (Wegner et al., 1994), an extension of the secrecy-preoccupation effect (Slepian & Greenaway, 2018). Together, these interpersonal accounts of information-access-regulation processes propose that sharing information fosters feelings of intimacy between the sharer and recipient, particularly when this is concealed from others.
Group mechanisms
Some researchers have suggested that interpersonal relationships are a bridge through which information-access regulation affects group dynamics. For example, it has been argued that interpersonal processes such as reciprocal trust (in which one person trusts a specific other who has imparted information to them) may operate through group pathways—for example, by increasing group cohesion so that trust is extended to other group members who were not implicated in the initial sharing (Bunch et al., 1983; Fine & Holyfield, 1996). Relatedly, gossip has been argued to bond people together by conveying information about culture and society in a manner equivalent to grooming in other apes (Baumeister et al., 2004; Dunbar, 2004; Kniffin & Wilson, 2010; Kurland & Pelled, 2000; Peters et al., 2017; Wert & Salovey, 2004).
It is rare in this area for explanations to focus directly on the group level without reference to interpersonal relations. Accordingly, these explanations do not seek to explain situations in which individuals do not have a one-to-one tie to people who are sharing information with them. For example, interpersonal explanations do not well explain how being part of a group that engages in information-access regulation might affect how individuals feel about the group as a whole, including group members they may not interact with regularly, or even at all. One exception is research from sociology that suggests shared secrecy fosters a feeling of collective exceptionalism and promotes group cohesion (Costas & Grey, 2014; Courpasson & Younes, 2018; Simmel, 1908). The account this offers is similar to SITIAR’s hypothesis that shared social identity is a core mechanism of information-access regulation, without going on to specify why information-access regulation can also have effects on the individual level (e.g., having implications for personal well-being) as SITIAR does.
Another relevant line of research explores folk theories of groups and how the exchange of information can shape group perception. For example, groups that interact more, are more internally connected, and share more knowledge among their members are perceived as more “entitative,” that is, as forming a distinct entity that is distinguishable from other entities (Denson et al., 2006; Igarashi & Kashima, 2011; Lickel et al., 2000, 2001; McGarty et al., 1995). Although lay theories of groups are not solely driven by perceived relations between composite group members, this research does consider such interactions to be an important component of group perception (Lickel et al., 2001). Accordingly, it is possible that along with making social identities more or less salient, information-access regulation may also affect the perceived entitativity of those groups, thus further increasing group identification (Castano et al., 2003). In other words, at the group level perceived entitativity may be a process similar to self-categorization by which information-access regulation also affects shared social identity.
In summary, there are many potential mechanisms through which information-access regulation affects individuals, interpersonal relationships, and groups. It should be noted that these mechanisms do not generally contradict one another or the main mechanism proposed in SITIAR. However, the sheer number of potential explanations can be seen as a reason for theoretical integration, clarity, and parsimony. In particular, SITIAR unites disparate effects across disparate lines of research, accounting for the wide variety of positive and negative individual and group outcomes found in the information-access-regulation universe. From this perspective, SITIAR provides theoretical breadth in that it can be invoked to understand the processes and effects of information-access regulation at individual, interpersonal, and group levels of analysis.
There are even some contexts in which shared social identity may be a stronger predictor of relevant outcomes than other mechanisms. For example, in the case of well-being, research suggests that shared group identities are sometimes a stronger predictor of health outcomes than individual ties (C. Haslam et al., 2016). Likewise, there is a large body of evidence linking social-identity processes to group outcomes (Ellemers et al., 1997; S. A. Haslam, 2001; Van Vugt & Hart, 2004) above and beyond interpersonal interactions (Tanis & Postmes, 2008). This is particularly the case compared with group-level accounts that are based on interpersonal dynamics, which cannot always explain group processes beyond the specific sharer and recipient. For example, accounts that rely on reciprocal trust can explain how sharing information affects the way in which the sharer and withholder relate to each other but cannot explain how this process might affect how the sharer and withholder perceive themselves in relation to other people.
Future Directions
There are a number of potential avenues for researchers interested in testing and extending SITIAR, beginning with work that provides empirical examination of its hypotheses. As a starting point, it is important to establish whether the psychological mechanism we have identified—shared social identity—does indeed underpin the effects of information-access regulation. A strong test of the theory would pit this process against alternative mechanisms identified from disparate studies on information-access regulation. For example, research might assess shared social identity alongside other proposed individual mechanisms such as mind-wandering, autonomy, coherence, anxiety, and emotional distress and compare these variables in terms of their ability to predict changes in well-being outcomes. Regarding group outcomes, a similar procedure could be followed to compare the predictive value of shared social identity alongside other mechanisms such as reciprocal trust and interpersonal distance. Another method that would allow for greater causal inference would be to conduct experiments in which social-identity processes are “blocked”—for instance by making participants’ personal identity salient and seeing whether information-access regulation still affects relevant health outcomes (Pirlott & MacKinnon, 2016).
Moreover, some alternative theoretical perspectives on information-access regulation make predictions that differ from those of SITIAR in direction. For example, obsessive preoccupation accounts of secrecy (e.g., Wegner et al., 1994) predict that a person secretly spying on a target may become more attracted to that target, an idea that has some empirical support (Olson et al., 1976). SITIAR does not make this prediction and in fact would predict that this situation would lead to a reduced sense of shared social identity with the target, which should reduce attraction (Hogg & Hardie, 1991; Tanis & Postmes, 2005). However, it is possible that both these mechanisms occur simultaneously. These accounts could be pitted against each other by testing whether participants are more attracted to a target when they are secretly versus openly observed. Furthermore, personal versus social attraction (see Hogg & Hardie, 1991) could be measured to further disentangle these mechanisms. SITIAR also differs from accounts that conceptualize disclosure as fulfilling psychological needs (Lepore et al., 2000; MacReady et al., 2011; Páez et al., 1999; Pennebaker, 1989, 2003); specifically, Hypothesis 4a implies that concealing information from (vs. disclosing information to) out-group members may increase shared social identity with other group members and thus increase feelings of belonginess. These predictions could be tested by varying whether a target to whom information is disclosed is an in-group or an out-group member to see whether this moderates the positive effects of disclosure found in previous research.
Likewise, it is important for future theoretical work to account for empirical effects of information-access regulation on individuals and groups that cannot be explained by SITIAR. For example, Slepian and Bastian (2017) found that thinking about secret misdeeds leads to a sense that one deserves to be punished and furthermore leads to self-punishment. Although thinking about one’s secret misdeeds may reduce shared social identity by making personal identity salient, it is not clear how this would necessarily create a sense of moral transgression. Other research into the burden of secrecy has found that keeping secrets affects judgment of hill slant, perceived distance, as well as the actual distance one throws a beanbag (Slepian et al., 2012, 2014, 2015). It is not clear how the psychological mechanisms that underpin SITIAR can explain these outcomes. Moreover, there are positive effects of disclosure that occur without an audience (Niederhoffer & Pennebaker, 2009; Pennebaker, 1997). Although these effects do not contradict SITIAR and in fact appear to be strengthened when disclosure is shared with others (MacReady et al., 2011; Rimé, 2009), they do appear to lie outside the scope of the social-identity processes we have explored. However, it is possible they relate to imagined audiences and associated social identities (Klein et al., 2007) and hence could be subsumed within an extended appreciation of our model.
Furthermore, future research should investigate potential boundary conditions to the effects predicted by SITIAR. For example, according to optimal-distinctiveness theory (Brewer, 1991), group identification is a function of two competing needs: inclusion and differentiation. This theory aligns with SITIAR in that extending information-access regulation can be seen as a fulfilling both of these needs—satisfying the need for inclusion when information is shared with others and the need for differentiation when information is kept from a third party. Accordingly, both SITIAR and optimal-distinctiveness theory would predict that collectively sharing information would lead to greater shared social identity than individual information access or unbounded sharing. However, a further implication of optimal-distinctiveness theory is that there is an optimal balance between inclusion and differentiation, such that too much deindividuation can reduce group identification (Leonardelli et al., 2010). Applied to information-access regulation, this implies that if groups keep too many secrets, this may lead to a greater need for individual differentiation, which may reduce shared social identity. Alternatively, highly identified group members might respond to this situation by seeking to differentiate their group from others still further, potentially leading to intergroup conflict (Jetten & Spears, 2003; Leonardelli & Toh, 2015). We hope that the current work provides a starting point for future research to explore these various possibilities and further investigate the rich psychology of information-access regulation.
Conclusion
When should people reveal, and when should they conceal? The ultimate purpose of SITIAR is to help answer this question by outlining the effects of sharing and withholding access to information on the people involved. We have argued that whenever access to information is regulated—be it through secrecy, confidentiality, privacy, concealment, disclosure, or gossip—this process shapes the social identity of those given access. This explains why people who share access to information feel a sense of social closeness with others who have the same access, as well as why people who keep information from others feel the burden of social isolation.
Information-access regulation is intimately connected with many parts of human life, from individuals struggling to keep stigmatized identities concealed, to therapists who keep their clients’ secrets, to organizations and agencies crisscrossed by layers of secrecy, confidentiality, and gossip. In this article we have provided a theoretical framework to understand how this essential human activity shapes the psychology of those involved, in ways that have implications not only for organizational and team functioning but also for individual well-being.
