Twisting the truth

[magid]

A study has found that men and women both lie about the same amount, but there is a gender gap: apparently men tend to lie to make themselves look better, and women tend to lie to make the other person feel better.

How did they determine this? They videotaped pairs of grad students meeting for the first time, telling them it was a study about reactions to meeting someone new. Then the grad students got to watch the tape to see if they'd said anything inaccurate.

I read about it here, while the actual research was published in the June issue of the Journal of Basic and Applied Social Psychology.

Also cited was another study showing that leaders tend to have better skills at lying than others (though this does not mean that they lie more, apparently). Interesting.

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Comments

[queue.livejournal.com]

I heard about this on NPR a few weeks ago.

While this may be useful for determining differences between genders and whatever, it's not necessarily a good measure for how much people lie in general. The focus of the NPR report seemes to be "People lie a lot!", while all this study tells me is that people lie a lot when they are meeting someone new.

[magid.livejournal.com]

What was interesting to me was that they asked people to evaluate how truthful they'd thought they'd been, then asked to watch the tape... People found that they'd been less truthful than they'd thought. Which is not to say that people necessarily go around lying a lot, nor intentionally, but that they're less in a position to evaluate this objectively on-the-fly, as it were.
a

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

I wonder how honest the people were when asked "How truthful do you think you were?" I mean, come on, are you going to say, "Oh yeah, I know I totally made up a bunch of stuff." I think this supposed ignorance of being dishonest is bullshit, but then I am usually aware of not representing things honestly. But then maybe most people don't really give a lot of thought to what they are saying . . .

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I'm not sure that my experience supports the sex generalization. I would expect that everyone, when meeting someone new, would be more likely to lie to make themselves look better.

I think in many ways, the more interesting part is people's perception of their own honesty. It at least shows a measure of self-honesty that they were able to acknowledge afterwards where they were not truthful.

not particularly

[cthulhia]

a lot of people are self-deprecating out of fear of looking like they are hard-selling themselves to someone.
They know how tiresome it is when people introduce themselves with a cacophony of tooting their own horns.

I mean, I'm not the only self-deprecating one out there.

Although, I suppose downplaying one's own self-centered-ness is a sort of deception to make oneself look better...

ow, my brain hurts.

[slinkr.livejournal.com]

Lies to make oneself look better only work if one can do it without seeming arrogant and if one doesn't get caught out later. I find that the risks outweigh the potential rewards.

But I might feel differently if I were in a situation where I wasn't reasonably confident that I'd do fine by telling the truth.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

I agree. I just meant I'd expect people to be more likely to lie when meeting someone new and trying to make a certain kind of impression than when talking with somebody they already knew. I don't lie because I can't be bothered to keep track of who I've told what to. :)

[magid.livejournal.com]

I also try not to lie.

I have found myself not giving certain details about something to some friends, while not giving them to other friends, which leaves me remembering who I've told what, even without actual lying.

Case in point: I don't talk to my parents about much of my social life. However, this means that sometimes I have to decide to talk about event X rather than event Y when talking with them.

I am not proud of this, but I've not yet worked my way out of doing this with them, perhaps because I'm the always-does-what-parents-prefer kid, at least until recently, and it's hard to change, risk rejection, etc.
o

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

There are very few times I have actually fibbed to The Parents. At the same time I know that while they love me they do wish my life had turned out differently. Oh well. Another lifetime maybe. But no, there's some things I avoid talking with them about too.

Is this a lie?

[magid.livejournal.com]

Telling someone about something you've done, using words that are technically accurate, but make it sound more exciting than you really think it is.

I don't know whether the people in the study were out-and-out lying ("Nice dress!"), or stretching the truth a bit more than they'd realized, or just exaggeration to a greater degree ("There were millions of them!").
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