We found in my study that secrets really do “weigh people down “and not just mentally.

　　In the first test, we asked 40 people to recall a secret. They were then each asked to estimate the steepness of a hill. Those harboring a meaningful personal secret believed the hill was steeper than those who merely recalled small secrets.

　　In another test, we asked the 40 people to keep their secrets. The participants first rated their secrets, then asked them to rate the energy and effort required to perform common tasks, such as carrying groceries upstairs, helping someone move, or walking the dog. The people who were more bothered by their secret rated the tasks as using more energy.

　　Our study conclusion: The more burdensome the secret and the more thought devoted to it, the more perception and action were influenced in a manner similar to carrying physical weight.

　　Our brain doesn’t like secrets. Neuroscientist David Eagleman said that harboring a secret increases levels of stress hormones in the body. “You have competition in the brain-one part wants to tell something and the other part doesn’t,” he says.

　　Writing down secrets in a journal can decrease those stress hormones. So even if you’ve sworn to keep your mouth shut, find relief by opening a notebook. From a healthy-living standpoint, maybe spilling the beans is a good thing.

　　Can you keep secrets? If so, for how long?

　　Comment 1：

　　Your secrecy study isn’t the first to: investigate the physical consequences of secret-keeping. In 2006, Anita E. Kelly, a psychologist at the University of Notre Dame told the Association for Psychological Science that “secretive people also tend to be sick people.,”

　　Comment 2：

　　Maybe keeping one’s own secret, if it is something one knows to be hurtful, is a burden. But, keeping someone else’s secret is not a burden. Telling someone’s secret is the shameful thing, not being loyal and refraining from gossip.

　　Comment 3：

　　If someone wants to vent and tell me something confidential-I feel I am adult enough to keep it to myself-it is not my place to blab about personal business of others. I like to mind my own business-it keeps my life simple.

　　Comment 4：

　　When I was in grade 2,my friend told me she was a vampire (吸血鬼) and not to tell anyone. I kept her secret totally to myself for two years before realizing how stupid I was.

　　Comment 5：

　　Secrets are living things. They are a kind of like parasites. They feed off of the soul of the person who carries them, and once they have sucked the carrier dry of all self control, out they come.

　　1. The main idea of the quoted blog is that

　　A. for health’s sake, we shouldn’t keep secrets

　　B. our brain doesn’t like secrets

　　C. keeping a secret can be a real physical burden

　　D. you can find relief by opening a notebook for your secrets

　　2. After the 40 people were asked to keep their secrets, they

　　A. overestimated their energy

　　B. underestimated their energy

　　C. felt heavily burdened

　　D. couldn’t perform common tasks well

　　3. The writer of Comment l tries to

　　A. criticize the blogger

　　B. do the same study as the blogger

　　C. defy the theory of the blogger

　　D. give more information to the blogger

　　4. The writer of Comment 2 believes that_____

　　A. keeping someone else’s secret is not a physical burden

　　B. keeping one’s own secret is not a physical burden

　　C. telling someone else’s secret can relieve one’s own burden

　　D. gossip is hard to be refrained

　　5. Which of the following writers is more likely to be cheated?

　　A. The writer of Comment 2. B. The writer of Comment 3.

　　C. The writer of Comment 4. D. The writer of Comment 5.

　　參考答案：1-5 C B D A C