See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/318324928

Can Self-Concealment Moderate the Link Between Lying and Mental Health?

Poster · October 2013

CITATIONS READS

0 70

3 authors, including:

Mara Norton-Baker Lijuan Wang

Lexington VA Health Care System University of Notre Dame
11 PUBLICATIONS   11 CITATIONS    63 PUBLICATIONS   1,220 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Personality and Sexual Violence View project

NPS and college students View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Mara Norton-Baker on 04 October 2017.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Can Self-Concealment Moderate the Link Between Lying and Mental Health?
Mara a
Norton-Baker , Anita b
Kelly , & Peggy Wang b
aUNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA; bUNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

INTRODUCTION RESULTS
The literature strongly supports the idea that secrecy and lying are correlated with A multilevel model with a time varying covariate (number of major lies) was fitted to the data to model both
poorer health and relationships. Recently, Kelly and Wang (2012) observed that a between- and within-person effects of lying on health outcomes. In the model, the time varying covariate
reduction in lies was linked to better health through an improvement in relationships. was centered on the individual means to disaggregate the between- and within-person effects. The self-
concealment group variable is included in the level-2 model to test the moderations effects on both
The questions is raised, however, whether there is a subset of the population for
between- and within-person effects.
whom an increase in disclosure might be harmful. Cole et al. (1997) found that for
rejection-sensitive men, secrecy served as a protective factor against accelerated HIV The relationship between major lying and mental health averaged across weeks was significantly different
progression. (p=.02) between the high self-concealment group and low self-concealment group such that the high SC
group had a significantly weaker relation (17.68-11.72 vs. 17.68) than did the low SC group. See Table 2 for
 Self-concealment (SC) is a similar construct to rejection sensitivity, and is the
parameter estimates.
dispositional tendency to actively conceal personally distressing information. Further,
SC has been linked regularly to poorer social support and worse health.
The aim of this study was to search for evidence of moderation in the link between Table 1 Table 2
lying and mental health as a function of whether participants were high vs. low in self- Simple correlations, p-values, means, and standard deviations BSI and Frequency of Major Lies
concealment. Parameter Estimates
Variable 1 2 3 4 M SD Parameter Standard t
It is hypothesized that the relation between lying and mental health scores will be Variable DF estimate error Value Pr > |t|
1. wlweek -- .431* .098 .101 2.652 2.838
significantly weaker for high self-concealers than for low self-concealers.
2. mlweek -- .323* -.001 0.452 0.742 Intercept 1 11.47465 3.02983 3.79 0.0003
Major lie
METHOD 3. BSI -- -..507* 23.443 17.201 mean
across 10
Participants
4. SPS -- 85.189 10.096 weeks 1 2.75626 3.75626 3.42 0.0011
The sample included high and low self-concealers (N=68), identified from a broader
Note: wlweek = whilte lie mean across weeks; mlweek = major lie
sample of 110 college students and adult community members.
mean across weeks; BSI = Brief Symptom Inventory; SPS = Social SC group 1 17.68484 4.53382 3.90 0.0002
Participants were identified as high or low self-concealers by scoring in the top or Provisions Inventory
bottom 30% on the Self-Concealment Scale (SCS) *p<.05 Inter2 1 -11.72214 5.02167 -2.33 0.0227
The high self-concealment group (N=34) was 65% female with a mean age of 29.32
(SD=15.38) and with an average SCS score of 35.59 (SD=4.08).
The low self-concealment group (N=34) was 64% female with a mean age of 37.09 DISCUSSION REFERENCES
(SD=20.25) and with an average SCS score of 16.41 (SD= 2.83).  Cole, S., Kemeny, M., & Taylor, S.
For high self-concealers, major lies and mental health were
Participants were randomized to an experimental or control condition; however, the (1997). Social identity and physical health:
significantly more weakly correlated than these variables were
current study is looking at between group effects across both conditions, so condition Accelerated HIV progression in rejection-
for the low self-concealers. Further, this weak correlation was
assignment is not taken into account in these analyses. sensitive gay men. Journal of Personality
not statistically significant different from a correlation of zero. and Social Psychology, 72, 320-325.
Procedure A proposed explanation for these results is that for self- Kelly, A., & Wang, P. (2012). A life without
Participants were randomly assigned to either a control or “no-lie” group. concealers, decreasing lies could result in already tenuous and lies: Can living more honestly improve
After condition assignment, the “no-lie” group was instructed to drop all lies for the stressed relationships becoming more damaged. health? Poster session presented at the
duration of the experiment (10 weeks), while the control group received no such APA Annual Convention, Orlando, FL.
instruction. A key limitation of this study is that these results alone cannot
Larson, D., & Chastain, R. (1990). Self-
During each weekly visit, participants completed the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI), the sort out competing mechanisms for how lying might serve other concealment – Conceptualization,
Social Provisions Scale (SPS), and were given a polygraph examination to encourage purposes for self-concealers. Rather, this study identified and measurement, and health implications.
honesty when asked to report on the number of weekly physician visits (GP, dentist, described the moderating relationship that self-concealment can Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology,
mental health professional) and on number of weekly white and major lies. have on the lying/mental-health link. 9, 439-455.

View publication stats

This research was supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation