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Abstract and Figures
In 2 diary studies of lying, 77 college students reported telling 2 lies a day, and 70 community members told 1. Participants told more self-centered lies than other-oriented lies, except in dyads involving only women, in which other-oriented lies were as common as self-centered ones. Participants told relatively more self-centered lies to men and relatively more other-oriented lies to women. Consistent with the view of lying as an everyday social interaction process, participants said that they did not regard their lies as serious and did not plan them much or worry about being caught. Still, social interactions in which lies were told were less pleasant and less intimate than those in which no lies were told.
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... Online dating; lying; memory; metamemory; judgments of learning (JOL) On average, people tell at least one lie per day (DePaulo et al., 1996;Serota & Levine, 2015). Previous research reveals that online dating sites are one platform in which lying about personal information is quite common (Hancock & Toma, 2009;Toma et al., 2008;Lo et al., 2013;Guadagno et al., 2012). ...
... For example, eye colour can be considered an instance of personal semantic knowledge because we observe it over time on different occasions, and responding to the question about eye colour does not require mental time travel, unlike episodic incidents. Feelings, opinions, knowledge, achievements, failures, facts, and possessions constitute some of the personal semantic themes people frequently lie about (DePaulo et al., 1996). The fabrication of lies about personal semantic information might be similar to lies about episodic incidents in certain respects. ...
Research shows that people lie on online dating sites often but might fail to remember this information subsequently. This study investigated participants' predicted and actual memory performance for personal semantic information after telling the truth versus a lie in two experiments in a setup similar to online dating sites. In Experiment 1, participants responded to open-ended questions either truthfully or fabricated lies in a within-subjects design, followed by predictions for remembering their responses. Subsequently, they recalled their responses through free-recall. Using the same design, Experiment 2 also manipulated the type of retrieval task by using a free- or cued-recall test. The results showed that participants consistently had higher memory predictions for truthful than deceptive responses. However, the actual memory performance did not always produce similar results to their predictions. The results suggest that the difficulties during lie fabrication, measured through response latencies, partially mediated the relationship between lying and memory predictions. The study has important applied implications for lying about personal semantic information in online dating contexts.
... Where lying begins during childhood, it can eventually come to be regarded as acceptable by the child and a frequent occurrence within interpersonal interactions [15]. Research demonstrates that if a person does not believe their lie was important, then this does not bother them [18]. Throughout history, religiousness has been associated with discipline and virtuousness and opposed to vice [19]. ...
Lying is seemingly common in daily life, but it is scarcely researched despite its possible relevance to understanding a range of pathological behaviors and associated deception. Our aim was to investigate whether the acceptability of lying might indicate other personality constructs by analyzing a variety of questionnaire responses collected from a cross-sectional sample (n = 138). Total scores for lying acceptability were moderately associated with Machiavellianism and with functional impairment due to lying at work, in social settings, and at home. Scores for these tests were not closely associated with problematic usage of the internet, self-esteem, or religious activity/religiosity. Three distinct groupings produced by a multidimensional scale informed us of how lying might be better understood as an explanatory mechanism for compulsive behaviors. We also noted possible avenues for future research into the acceptability of lying and deception.
... One is the impression management perspective, which has its roots in sociology (Goffman, 1959), linguistics (Brown & Levinson, 1987), and social psychology (Schlenker & Weigold, 1989). In this perspective, the "self" presented to others is an edited and packaged one (DePaulo et al., 1996). Hooghiemstra (2000, p. 60) states that impression management concerns "how individuals present themselves to others to be perceived favorably by others." ...
We examine the relation between earnings information content and the use of trust words, such as “character,” “ethics,” and “honest,” in the MD&A section of 10-K. We find that earnings announcements of firms using trust words have lower information content than earnings announcements of firms that do not use trust words. We also find that the value relevance of earnings is lower for firms using trust words than those not using trust words. Further, firms using trust words are more likely to receive a comment letter from the SEC, pay higher audit fees, and have lower corporate social responsibility scores. Overall, our results suggest that firms that use trust words in the 10-K are associated with negative outcomes, and trust words are an inverse measure of trust.
... However, the literature shows that people routinely dissemble in everyday interactions. Lies are generally self-serving and most often told for the psychological benefit of the liar, for example, to manage public impressions (DePaulo et al., 1996). People lie for many reasons, and in fact, most commonplace deceptions are relatively innocuous. ...
A disquieting aspect of some contemporary public discourse is its seeming indifference to or abandonment of any pretense to truth. Among other things, unsubstantiated and misleading claims have been made about the efficacy of vaccines and other purported treatments for SARS-COVID, the 2020 U.S. presidential election, and the January 6, 2021, insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. In addition, a spate of legislation restricting classroom discussion and instruction related to race, bias, privilege, and discrimination has been or is pending passage in U.S. state legislatures. These restrictions are antithetical to core functions of education, which are to inculcate the values, virtues, and advanced literacy skills that support democratic deliberation about controversial issues. This article discusses the increasing political polarization and partisan attacks on the processes of education and the threats to liberal democracy posed by this disregard for the truth. In addition, it reviews the cultural and psychological factors that increase our susceptibility to misinformation and presents a perspective about the pursuit of truth that highlights the educational affordances of disciplinary inquiry, democratic deliberation, and reasonable argumentation. The contemporary challenges are manifestations of long-standing political and cultural divisions, and their mitigation will depend on developing communities of informed citizens that are committed to the values and virtues that are foundational to liberal democracy.
... Lying is a part of everyday human communication, and most of us engage in it-studies show that people tell an average of one to two lies per day [1]. It has been reported that lies are also increasingly common in computer-mediated communication and in text-based interactions [2]. ...
Lying appears in everyday oral and written communication. As a consequence, detecting it on the basis of linguistic analysis is particularly important. Our study aimed to verify whether the differences between true and false statements in terms of complexity and sentiment that were reported in previous studies can be confirmed using tools dedicated to measuring those factors. Further, we investigated whether linguistic features that differentiate true and false utterances in English-namely utterance length, concreteness, and particular parts-of-speech-are also present in the Polish language. We analyzed nearly 1,500 true and false statements, half of which were transcripts while the other half were written statements. Our results show that false statements are less complex in terms of vocabulary, are more concise and concrete, and have more positive words and fewer negative words. We found no significant differences between spoken and written lies. Using this data, we built classifiers to automatically distinguish true from false utterances, achieving an accuracy of 60%. Our results provide a significant contribution to previous conclusions regarding linguistic deception indicators.
... Similarly, social distance theorists (c.f. DePaulo, Kashy, Kirkendol, Wyer, & Epstein, 1996) suggested that a deceptive actor will try to minimize potential cues to reduce the cognitive load associated with deception, by adopting a cue-lean communication mode or style and thereby limiting opportunities for others to question or engage in conversation. In face-to-face communication, a deceiver can create psychological distance by exhibiting literal (physical) distance (e.g., standing/ sitting remotely from the conversational party), or by choosing to interact via the telephone rather than meeting physically (Mehrabian, 1968). ...
This study investigates the efficacy of collective sensing as a mechanism for unveiling disinformation in group interaction. Small group interactions were simulated to experiment on the effects of a group reaction to incentivized deceptive behavior when initiated by social influencers. We use multilevel modeling to examine the individual communication data nested within group interactions. The study advances the use of computational efficacy to support the supposition of collective sensing—by analyzing individual social actors’ communicative language and interaction within group contexts. Language-action cues as stigmergic signals were systemically extracted, compared and analyzed within groups as well as between groups. The results demonstrate that patterns of group communication become more concentrated and expressive after a social influencer becomes deceptive, even when the act of deception itself is not obvious to any individual. That is, individuals in the group characterize deceptive situations differently, but communication patterns depict the group’s ability to collectively sense deception from circulating disinformation. The study confirms our postulation of using collective sensing to detect deceptive influences in a group.
Because of the pandemic, face masks have become ubiquitous in social interactions, but it remains unclear how face masks influence the ability to discriminate between truthful and deceptive statements. The current study manipulated the presence of face masks, statement veracity, statement valence (positive or negative), and whether the statements had been practiced or not. Despite participants' expectations, face masks generally did not impair detection accuracy. However, participants were more accurate when judging negatively valenced statements when the speaker was not wearing a face mask. Participants were also more likely to believe positively rather than negatively valenced statements.
The paper at hand elaborates on two conceptual ambiguities inherent in the current state of development in the important research field of how individual thinking links with effective organizational action. In so doing the text firstly arguments why routinized reflection is needed to balance the danger of complacency on the individual level of analysis. Secondly, the paper gives a review of why existing writing on the key strategic management concept of dynamic capabilities is hitherto unclear about how exactly that pivotal theoretical concept can simultaneously safeguard both routinized replication and dynamic adaptation. The paper also provides evidence for that topic’s practical relevance in today’s increasingly knowledge-based business environment, as being simultaneously sensitive to weak signals of required changes while exploiting existing sources of revenue constitutes a key requirement for organizational longevity. The paper makes the conceptual proposition of a jester-like mindset to bridge the two outlined theoretical gaps. In a nutshell, this idea centers around the fact that individual organizational actors cannot stand the immense challenge of continually judging whether use of time-tested solutions or constructive challenging of routine action is required. This is the reason why the needed routinized reflection has to be transferred to the group-level of analysis by creating an attitude shared by all constituents, which makes it safe to trigger organizational adaptation. The paper sketches six fields of application, where the proposed mindset augments our understanding of how to create organizations prone to effective changeability. The paper ends with sketching avenues for further empirical research to inform the jester-mindset’s theoretical refinement.
Critics of virtue reliabilism allege that the view cannot account for testimonial knowledge, as the acquisition of such knowledge is creditable to the testifier, not the recipient's cognitive abilities. I defend virtue reliabilism by attending to empirical work concerning human abilities to detect sincerity, certainty, and seriousness through bodily cues and properties of utterances. Then, I consider forms of testimony involving books, newspapers, and online social networks. I argue that, while discriminatory abilities directed at bodily cues and properties of utterances are impotent in the face of such testimony, alternative abilities facilitate the acquisition of knowledge from these sources.
This paper reports the results of three exploratory studies aimed at describing the purposes and consequences of lies. Observational modes were: a partly open‐ended questionnaire, content analysis of several tape‐recorded interviews, and a large‐scale survey. Several results appeared in all three studies. Two of three lies are told for selfish reasons, and three of four are told to social or economic superiors. These and other results are interpreted to mean that a dominant reason for lying is to equalize imbalanced interpersonal relations. Furthermore, liars are consistently more satisfied with their lies than with themselves. Therefore, the report concludes that the social proscription against deceit creates personal costs for the liar. As a consequence, lying takes place only when rewards are both large and assured. Many lies are told repeatedly—in identical situations—and so are presumably field‐tested for both costs and benefits.
Infants’ and children’s initial attempts to decipher the true nature of their interpersonal and physical worlds mark the beginning of a scientific enterprise that will last a lifetime. Such an awesome undertaking requires sophisticated privately-owned equipment (for example, developing cognitive structures and sensory capabilities) and dependable external sources of support (for example, the existence of discernible invariances in the real world). Another tremendously rich source of data consists of information that is conveyed by other people. Much of this information that is conveyed to infants and children is sensible and useful. For example, adults often try to convey to children the names of people and things, the meanings of words, and some notion of the currently acceptable standards of conduct and systems of values. On other occasions, however, adults tell children about verbally fluent bears and pigs; about wolves who dress up like grandmothers; black-clad women who travel by broomstick; and cows that jump over the moon. The child’s world is punctuated with other types of verbal oddities as well. For example, when Junior smashes a priceless antique in his haste to escape to the great outdoors, his father remarks, “That’s just great.” Curiously, his father uttered the exact same words one day when Junior had picked up all of his toys.
Twenty students participated in this study in which white lies were collected and coded for analysis. Overall, findings confirm previous findings that lies are often used to cope with difficulties in unequal power relationships. (PD)
This study explores the form and function of deception in close relationships. Free response descriptions of situations involving the deception of a relational partner were obtained from 357 university students and other adults. Descriptions were coded for type of deceptive communication, antecedent condition, type of information and reasons given for being deceptive. Results indicated that falsification was the most frequently reported type of deceptive communication and avoiding hurt to partner was the most frequently reported specific reason for deception. Comparisons across types of relationship revealed that (1) married respondents reported proportionately more instances of omission and fewer instances of explicit falsification relative to other relationship types, (2) dating respondents reported proportionately more reasons focused on protecting their resources and avoiding stress/abuse from partner, (3) dating respondents reported proportionately more reasons focused on avoiding relational trauma/termination, and (4) married respondents reported proportionately more reasons focused on avoiding threats to partner's face/self-esteem. For the total sample, high ratings of relational satisfaction, closeness and perceived partner commitment were associated with the general category of partnerfocused reasons.
Spontaneous expressive control of negative emotion was examined in 2 studies of children aged 3-9 using an experimental "disappointing" situation. In Study 1, facial expressions, verbalizations, and spontaneous references to emotional expression control were examined in terms of the child's age and sex and the experimental manipulation (neutral, positive, and "disappointing" mood segments). Results suggested that children attempted to control the display of negative emotion with positive displays and that females did so more than males. No effect of age on expressive behavior was found. Age differences were found for children's spontaneous reference to expressive control, with such references increasing with age. To further examine the possibility that preschoolers engaged in expressive control, Study 2 examined the expressive behavior of 20 preschool girls in the disappointing situation in 2 conditions, alone or with the examiner present. These data indicated that females, aged 3-4, inhibited negative displays when in the presence of the examiner.