A Few Prolific Liars
Truth-default theory makes the twin predictions that (a) most people are (mostly) honest most of the time and (b) most lies are told by a few prolific liars.
Kim Serota and I have been researching the frequency of lying since 2010 and our findings seem to have held up well.
Again and again we find that most people lie about 0 to 2 times per day. We call these folks the normatively honest majority. In contrast, there are a few people who lie quite often. They are the few prolific liars or “outliars.” The frequent liars make the distribution of lying highly “skewed” and because of this, most people lie less frequently than the average person.
Because of the skew, the average rate of lying is misleading. By the way, the same skew applied to many types of socially disapproved behavior.
A fun fact is that “Outliars” was the original title of our 2010 paper, but the editor objected and demand a more descriptive but less fun title.
A second fun fact is that Debey et al. (2015) won an Ig Nobel Prize for replicating our findings. I don’t know if I should happy or upset about that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners#2016
Here are relevant citations:
Serota, K. B., Levine, T. R., and Boster, F. J. (2010). The prevalence of lying in America: Three studies of reported deception. Human Communication Research, 36, 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2009.01366.x
Levine, T. R., Serota, K. B., Carey, F, & Messer, D. (2013). Teenagers lie a lot: A further investigation into the prevalence of lying. Communication Research Reports, 30, 211-220. https://doi.org/10.1080/08824096.2013.806254
Serota, K. B., & Levine, T. R. (2015). A few prolific liars: Variation in the prevalence of lying. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 34, 138-157. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X1452880
Park, H. S., Serota, K. B., & Levine, T. R. (2021). In search of Korean Outliars: “a few prolific liars” in South Korea. Communication Research Reports, 38, 206-215. https://doi.org/10.1080/08824096.2021.1922374
Daiku, Y., Serota, K. B., & Levine, T. R. (2021). A few prolific liars in Japan: Replication and the effects of Dark Triad personality traits. Plos One, 16, e0249815. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249815
Serota, K. B., Levine, T. R., & Docan-Morgan, T. (2022). Unpacking variation in lie prevalence: Prolific liars, bad lie days, or both? Communication Monographs, 89, 307-331. https://doi.org/10.1080/03637751.2021.1985153
Besides our own work, I recommend:
Halevy, R., Shalvi, S., & Verschuere, B. (2014). Being honest about dishonesy: Correlating self-reports and actual lying. Human Communication Research, 40, 54-72. https://doi.org/10.1111/hcre.12019
Debey, E., De Schryver, M., Logan, G. D., Suchotzki, K., & Verschuere, B. (2015). From junior to senior Pinocchio: A cross-sectional lifespan investigation of deception. Acta Psychologica, 160, 58-68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2015.06.007
Curtis, D. A. and Hart, C. L. (2020). Pathological lying: Theoretical and empirical support for a diagnostic entity. Psychiatric Research & Clinical Practice, 2, 62-69. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.prcp.20190046
For those interested in pathological lying, look into Drew Curtis and Chris Hart’s work. They are the go-to experts.
For those especially interested in deception in children, see Victoria Talwar of McGill University.
Curtis & Hart and Talwar have relatively recent books:
by Christian L Hart Ph.D. and Drew A. Curtis Ph.D. | Aug 22, 2023
Pathological Lying: Theory, Research, and Practice 1st Edition by Drew A. Curtis Ph.D. (Author), Christian L Hart Ph.D. (Author)
The Truth About Lying: Teaching Honesty to Children at Every Age and Stage (APA LifeTools Series)
by PhD Victoria Talwar | Jul 19, 2022