Self-promotion is common in everyday life. Yet, across 8 studies (N = 1,687) examining a broad range of personal and professional successes, we find that individuals often hide their successes from others and that such hiding has relational costs. We document these effects among close relational partners, acquaintances, and within hypothetical relationships. Study 1 finds that targets feel less close to and more insulted by communicators who hide rather than share their successes. Study 2 finds that hiding success harms relationships both when the success is eventually discovered and when it is not. Studies 3 and 4 explore the mechanism underlying these relational costs: Targets infer that communicators have paternalistic motives when they hide their success, which leads them to feel insulted. Studies 5-7 explore the contextual cues that elicit inferences of paternalistic motives, such as private (vs. public) settings (Study 5), direct (vs. indirect) questions (Study 6), and close (vs. distant) relationships (Study 7). Across our studies, we also explore the emotional and impression-management consequences of hiding success. Although the relational consequences of hiding success are universally negative, the emotional and impression-management consequences are mixed. Whereas previous research highlights the negative consequences of sharing one's accomplishments with others, we find that sharing is superior to hiding for maintaining one's relationships. Thus, we shed new light on the consequences of paternalism and the relational costs of hiding information in everyday communication. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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隐藏成功。

自我促进在日常生活中很常见。然而，在8项研究（N = 1,687）中，研究了广泛的个人和职业成功，我们发现个人经常将自己的成功与他人相掩藏，并且这种掩盖具有相关的成本。我们记录了亲密关系伴侣，熟人之间以及假设关系中的这些影响。研究1发现，目标者感到自己与被掩盖而不是分享自己的成功的传播者的亲近感和侮辱性更大。研究2发现，隐藏成功对最终发现成功与否的关系都有害。研究3和4探索了这些关系成本的潜在机制：目标推断出，沟通者隐藏成功后会产生家长式的动机，这会使他们感到被侮辱。研究5-7探索了引起家长式动机推论的上下文线索，例如私人（相对于公共）设置（研究5），直接（相对于间接）问题（研究6）和亲密（相对于遥远）关系（研究7）。在我们的研究中，我们还探索了隐藏成功的情感和印象管理后果。尽管成功隐藏的关系后果普遍是负面的，但情感和印象管理的后果是混杂的。尽管先前的研究强调了与他人分享成就的负面影响，但我们发现分享对于保持一个人的关系比掩盖自己更好。因此，我们揭示了家长式管理的后果以及在日常交流中隐藏信息的相关成本。（PsycInfo数据库记录（c）2020 APA，