Secrecy involves the active concealment of information from others, which can cause undesirable consequences for cognitive, perceptual and health psychology, but empirical research linking secrecy to charitable behaviors remains relatively scarce. This research examined whether secrecy weakens people’s desire to engage in charitable behaviors. Two experiments demonstrated that as a mental burden, secrets decreased people’s donation desire, including their intentions to volunteer and donate, and their tangible charitable behavior. In Experiment 1, recalling a personal secret increased the tendency to donate less money than recalling a neutral experience. Study 2 showed that this weakening effect of secrecy on charitable behaviors is mediated by fatigue (but not negative affect).

保密涉及主动掩盖他人的信息，这可能对认知，知觉和健康心理学造成不良后果，但是将保密与慈善行为联系起来的实证研究仍然相对较少。这项研究探讨了保密是否削弱了人们从事慈善行为的欲望。两项实验表明，秘密作为一种精神负担，降低了人们的捐赠欲望，包括其志愿和捐赠的意图以及其切实的慈善行为。在实验1中，回想私人秘密比回想中立经历增加了捐钱的趋势。研究2表明，保密对慈善行为的这种减弱作用是由疲劳引起的（但不是负面影响）。