Tag Archives | Nationally Representative Probability Sample

Every Forest Has Its Shadow: The Demographics of Concealment in the United States

Maria S. Grigoryeva, Blaine G. Robbins

Sociological Science April 5, 2024
10.15195/v11.a13


This article examines what people conceal, who conceals from whom, and whether there are demographic differences in how much and what people conceal. We map concealment using a two-wave probability survey and behavioral experiment of U.S. adults (N = 1,281). Our survey measures self-reports of 37 different concealable attitudes, behaviors, and characteristics over a 12-month period, whereas the experiment provides a concrete behavioral measure of concealment. These data yield four principal findings. First, misinformation is commonplace in the United States, but it varies depending on what is being concealed. Second, certain demographic characteristics, such as age, predict rates of concealment, the proportion of things concealed, and lying in a behavioral experiment. Third, most demographic groups are similar in how much they conceal, but all demographic groups differ in what they conceal. Fourth, although some types of strong ties are more likely to be targets of concealment than weak ties, there is greater heterogeneity in concealment across different kinds of strong ties than between strong ties and weak ties, with spouses and partners being concealed from the least, on average. We conclude by discussing implications for theory and research on concealment.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Maria S. Grigoryeva: Division of Social Science, New York University Abu Dhabi
E-mail: mg5446@nyu.edu

Blaine G. Robbins: Division of Social Science, New York University Abu Dhabi
E-mail: bgr3@nyu.edu

Acknowledgements: The research reported here was financially supported by the Center for Behavioral Institutional Design and Tamkeen under the NYU Abu Dhabi Research Institute Award CG005. We would like to thank Ozan Aksoy, Elisa Bienenstock, Sergio Lo Iacono, Jennifer Glanville, Craig Rawlings, Arnout van de Rijt, Tobias Rüttenauer, Burak Sonmez, Martina Testori, and the external reviewer for their comments and suggestions, and John Dombrowski and Stefan Subias of the National Opinion Research Center for their research assistance. An earlier version of this manuscript was presented to the Advanced Quantitative Group at the University College London and the 2023 Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.

Supplemental Material

Replication Package: Data, code, the self-report concealment survey, and instructions for the sender-receiver game have been deposited in the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/293aw/).

  • Citation: Grigoryeva, Maria S., and Blaine G. Robbins. 2024. “Every Forest Has Its Shadow: The Demographics of Concealment in the United States.” Sociological Science 11: 340-378.
  • Received: December 15, 2023
  • Accepted: February 14, 2024
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Cristobal Young
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a13


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