People often keep relevant information secret from others. For example, an employee might keep a coworker's plan to quit without giving notice secret from their manager, or someone might keep a friend's affair secret from their friend's spouse. In this article, we identify a critical but overlooked factor that determines whether an actor will disclose secret information they know about another person: Impression management concerns about how other people will judge their decision to disclose or keep the secret. We conceptualize secret-keeping as social decisions that involve the focal actor (who could keep or disclose a secret), the partner (the focus of the secret), the audience (interested in learning the secret information), and external observers (who may observe if the focal actor disclosed the secret). Across four pre-registered studies, including real-world judgments of secret-keeping dilemmas (field data from a Reddit community; N = 332), a recall study (N = 200), and controlled experiments (N = 624), we describe how impression management concerns influence secret-keeping decisions. We find that focal actors are often judged harshly for disclosing others' secrets, even when the audience could derive substantial benefits from learning the information and even when observers judge disclosure to be more moral than keeping a secret. Focal actors are heavily influenced by impression management concerns and routinely keep partners' secrets from an audience who could benefit from the information. Taken together, impression management concerns act as significant impediments to the flow of information, advancing our understanding of both information flows within groups and secret-keeping dilemmas.

人们经常对他人保守相关信息的秘密。例如，员工可能会在没有向经理发出通知的情况下隐瞒同事的辞职计划，或者某人可能会向朋友的配偶隐瞒朋友的婚外情。在本文中，我们确定了一个关键但被忽视的因素，它决定了一个演员是否会透露他们所知道的有关另一个人的秘密信息：印象管理关注的是其他人如何人们会判断他们是否决定披露或保守秘密。我们将保密概念视为社会决策，涉及焦点参与者（可以保守或披露秘密）、合作伙伴（秘密的焦点）、受众（有兴趣了解秘密信息）和外部观察者（可能会观察焦点演员是否泄露了秘密）。涵盖四项预先注册的研究，包括现实世界对保密困境的判断（来自 Reddit 社区的现场数据；N  = 332）、回忆研究（N  = 200）和对照实验（N = 624），我们描述了印象管理问题如何影响保密决策。我们发现，焦点人物常常因为泄露他人的秘密而受到严厉的评判，即使观众可以从了解信息中获得实质性利益，甚至观察者认为披露比保守秘密更道德。焦点演员深受印象管理问题的影响，并且经常向可以从该信息中受益的受众保守合作伙伴的秘密。总的来说，印象管理问题是信息流动的重大障碍，增进了我们对群体内信息流动和保密困境的理解。