Keeping Secrets, Telling Secrets and the Implications for Social Influence: The Test Case of Abortion and Miscarriage in the United States

People selectively reveal secrets to or withhold secrets from each other and this behavior affects listeners’ perceptions of the people with whom they interact. I examine secret-keeping and telling using the test cases of abortion and miscarriage in the United States. I exploit their demographic similarities and that they vary with regard to stigma; miscarriage being a near-random event is analytically fruitful. Through a unique survey representative of American adults, I document that abortion secrets are told to sympathetic people and kept from those who may react negatively to the information -- even within families. As such, though abortion is a more common event that affects more women, more Americans come into knowing contact with a woman who has had a miscarriage. Consequently, people with positive attitudes toward abortion hear these secrets and will hence perceive and experience a heterogeneous network whereas people with negative attitudes will not hear about the abortions of the women they know and hence perceive and experience a homogeneous network, even if they live within the same circles. If individuals effectively exist in networks tailored by others to not offend them then the social change predicted by contact with diverse individuals will be thwarted.