And keeping secrets has costs. Research by UVA’s Julie Lane and Daniel suggests that concealing secrets during social interactions leads to the intrusive recurrence of secret thoughts, while research by Columbia’s Michael Slepian, Jinseok Chun, and Malia Mason shows that keeping secrets – even outside of social interactions – depletes us cognitively, interferes with our ability to concentrate and remember things, and even harms long-term health and well-being.