Article archive / October 1, 2012
Originally published: . Volume 4, No. 2. Source pages: 9.
Dr. Robert Laird and colleagues from the UNO Families & Teen Laboratory looked at developmental change in strategies that adolescents used to manage how much others know about them. The researchers examined longitudinal associations between disclosing (“telling all, telling if asked”) and concealing (“omitting details, keeping secrets, lying”) strategies.
The study, “Information Management Strategies in Early Adolescence: Developmental Change in Use and Transactional Associations With Psychological Adjustment,” was recently published in Developmental Psychology. Authors included Matt Marrrero, Jessica Melching, and Emily Kuhn.
Authors wrote, “Longitudinal links between strategies suggest a transactional process wherein infrequent disclosing is a gateway to concealment but concealment also predicts subsequent rank- order reductions in disclosure.”
Less disclosing was related to more subsequent antisocial behavior and depressive symptoms. But also, more antisocial behavior was related with more subsequent concealment.
“Although absolute declines in disclosure and increases in concealment are normative,” the authors write, “individual differences show that adolescents reporting low levels of disclosure, rather than high levels of concealment, appear to experience the most adjustment problems.”
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