Abstract
The feeling experienced by people during an interaction when another person seemingly notices something about them that they would rather conceal is referred to as a sense of unwanted transparency. This study investigated the effects of the reasons for concealment on the verbal strategies for managing the sense of unwanted transparency. Undergraduate participants were asked to pretend to be graduate students and to interview students who were confederates of the experimenter. The experimental conditions were the different reasons given for concealing that they were really undergraduate students. After the confederate's question aroused the sense of unwanted transparency, participants were asked a contrived question that the confederate said would be easy for a graduate student to answer. The results showed that the verbal strategies for answering the question were affected by the reasons for concealment. However, the reasons for concealment did not affect directly the verbal content and nonverbal responses from the sense of unwanted transparency.
