Do You Wanna Know a Secret ? - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/opinion/sunday/do-you-wanna-know-a-secret.html?_r=0
In a recent series of studies that we will present in a forthcoming issue of the journal Political Psychology, we have shown that people apply what we call a “secrecy heuristic” — a rule of thumb, in other words — when evaluating the quality of information related to national security. People rate otherwise identical pieces of information as more accurate, reliable and of higher quality when they are labeled secret rather than public. And people tend to think that national security decisions are wiser and better-reasoned when based on the same information labeled secret rather than public.
In one experiment, we had subjects read two government policy papers from 1995, one from the State Department and the other from the National Security Council, concerning United States intervention to stop the sale of fighter jets between foreign countries.
The documents, both of which were real papers released through the Freedom of Information Act, argued different sides of the issue. Depending on random assignment, one was described as having been previously classified, the other as being always public. Most people in the study thought that whichever document had been “classified” contained more accurate and well-reasoned information than the public document.
In another experiment, people read a real government memo from 1978 written by members of the National Security Council about the sale of fighter jets to Taiwan; we then explained that the council used the information to make decisions. Again, depending on random assignment, some people were told that the document had been secret and for exclusive use by the council, and that it had been recently declassified under the Freedom of Information Act. Others were told that the document had always been public.
As we expected, people who thought the information was secret deemed it more useful, important and accurate than did those who thought it was public. And people judged the National Security Council’s actions based on the information as more prudent and wise when they believed the document had been secret.