Shankar Vedantam

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This is Hidden Brain.

I'm Shankar Vedantam.

You're sitting in a school bus next to your best friend.

She tells you about the time she stole an eraser from the teacher's desk.

You wonder whether you should tell her about the time you stole a plush toy from a store.

As the bus rolls along, you go back and forth in your mind and then decide against it.

A few years later, you're at your high school prom.

At the end of the evening, you share a kiss with your prom date, who turns out to have bad breath.

This is not someone you are interested in long term.

Do you share the information or withhold it?

Or consider a much more serious situation later in life.

You're in a long-term relationship and you realize that for some years now, you have been questioning your own sexual orientation.

Your partner would be crushed to hear about it.

Things are generally going well in your relationship and you don't have immediate plans to act on your secret feelings.

Is it best to keep them to yourself?

At every stage of life, we find ourselves confronted with dilemmas like this.