You might think that if you have a secret, staying off email together would be the safest way to conceal it. One recent study suggests that people trying to conceal something are often highly active emailers, but their language choices still provide clues to the fact that they are trying to hide something.
Whisper picture from Shutterstock
Business Insider reports on a study of a two-stage study of the email habits of people with something to conceal which suggests that even when we’re consciously trying to keep a secret, our language often gives us away: “When the subject was corresponding with a person relevant to the secret in question, they used more deceptive language, and more negative emotions.”
Reason-to-seek-further-evidence warning: the study hasn’t been peer-reviewed yet, and at the moment there’s no suggestion that the relevant linguistic patterns are human-detectable — computers so far tackle language in an entirely different way to people. What does seem evident is that keeping a secret is a burden few of us can tackle without any evidence leaking out, however slight.
Your Emails Can Reveal If You Are Keeping A Secret [Business Insider]
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