Lying motivations: Exploring personality correlates of lying and motivations to lie.

The present study examined relationships between lying motivations and HEXACO (honesty–humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, openness) personality traits. Participants (257 adults recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk) completed questionnaires measuring lying frequency, lying motivations, and HEXACO traits. Lying frequency was inversely correlated with honesty–humility and conscientiousness. The most common motivations for lying were for altruistic reasons, for secretive reasons, and to avoid negative evaluation. Comparatively fewer participants reported lying for pleasure (duping delight), to obtain a reward, in carelessness, or for compulsive and protective reasons. HEXACO factors were found to be associated with both self-centered and other-centered motivations for lying. These results demonstrate that individuals lie for various reasons and that personality traits may partially explain differences in lying behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
Source: Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research