Secrecy is often studied as a social phenomenon in which certain information is concealed from a targeted audience out of fear of the repercussions, if this information were to fall into the wrong hands. It is therefore surprising that people are relatively willing to share their secrets with others. Traditionally, this behaviour has been explained on the bases of the assumption that people are naturally inclined to reveal their secrets. However, new evidence from the cognitive sciences and social psychology calls this assumption, and thus the theories of secrecy which rely on it, into question. In this article I present a re-interpretation of secrecy in light of this new evidence and evaluate what implications this holds for the study of secrecy in religion.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.