Personality Traits Associated with Various Forms of Lying

Association between dopamine receptor D2 Taq IA gene polymorphism (rs1800497) and personality traits

Objective

This study aimed to find a potential association between the DRD2 Taq1A gene polymorphism (rs1800497 C32806T) and personality traits.

Methods

In all, 249 youths were recruited for this study. The Short-form Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire was administered to assess personality traits. The participants were genotyped for the DRD2 Taq1A polymorphism using the polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism method. Statistical analysis was carried out to find a possible association between the genotypes and aspects of personality traits assessed.

Results

The frequencies of the A1 and A2 alleles in our sampled population were 215 (43.2%) and 283 (56.8%), while the frequencies of A1A1, A1A2, and A2A2 were 67 (26.9%), 81 (32.5%), and 101 (40.6%), respectively. The study population was not in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (χ2 = 17.64, p < 0.001). The A2 allele was significantly associated with extraversion. Although this allele was also associated with neuroticism, psychoticism, and lie, the association was not significant.

Conclusion

The A2 allele of the DRD2 Taq1A polymorphism was found to be more associated with extraversion, as measured by the Short-form Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire.

The costs of lying: Consequences of telling lies on liar's self-esteem and affect

Deceiving others is generally viewed as immoral. However, most people lie on a daily basis. This article examines the psychological consequences for the liars themselves, as they are participating in what is generally perceived as immoral behaviour. More specifically, this article focuses on the effects of lying on the liar's self-esteem and affect. We tested if lying, in comparison to telling the truth, lowers people's self-esteem and increases negative experienced affect. In total, three cross sectional and one longitudinal studies were conducted (N = 783). Results showed that lying decreased people's self-esteem and increased negative affect, regardless of the type of lie (self-centred vs. other-oriented). Furthermore, lying on a given day decreased people's self-esteem compared to their self-esteem on the previous day and to their average level of self-esteem across 5 days.

Parenting by Lying

Parenting by lying is a practice in which parents lie to their children to influence their emotions or behavior. Recently, researchers have tried to document the nature of this phenomenon and to understand its causes and consequences. The present research provides an overview of the research in the emerging field, describes some key theoretical and methodological challenges in studying this topic, and proposes a theoretical framework for understanding parenting by lying and for guiding future research to advance our knowledge about this understudied parenting practice.

Psychometric properties of the CEMA-A questionnaire: motives for lying

Previous research on the motives for lying lacks factorial models that allow grouping of motives into specific categories. The objective of this study is to confirm the factorial structure of the questionnaire of motives for lying (CEMA-A). Participants were 1,722 adults residing in the Canary Islands (Spain) who completed the CEMA-A and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ-R). The four-dimensional structure of the questionnaire was confirmed (χ2 = 1460.97, df = 325, p = 0.001; CFI = 0.94; TLI = 0.93; NFI = 0.93; NNFI = 0.93; RMSEA = 0.05, CI = 0.051-0.057; SRMR = 0.04). The four factors of the CEMA-A were Intrapersonal Motivation-Emotionality, Interpersonal Motivation-Sociability, Egoism/Hardness Motivation, and Malicious Motivation, with an internal consistency between 0.79 and 0.91. Invariance analyses confirmed the equivalence of the instrument for men and women. The CEMA-A factors positively correlated with Neuroticism and Psychoticism, and negatively with Dissimulation. Extraversion was not related to any of the factors, and only displayed a low negative correlation with Intrapersonal Motivation-Emotionality. Analysis of variance showed that men scored higher in Egoism/Hardness and Malicious Motivation. The CEMA-A has proven capable of apprehending the motives for lying and has adequate psychometric criteria for use in various populations.

Founder personality and entrepreneurial outcomes: A large-scale field study of technology startups

Technology startups play an essential role in the economy-with seven of the ten largest companies rooted in technology, and venture capital investments totaling approximately $300B annually. Yet, important startup outcomes (e.g., whether a startup raises venture capital or gets acquired) remain difficult to forecast-particularly during the early stages of venture formation. Here, we examine the impact of an essential, yet underexplored, factor that can be observed from the moment of startup creation: founder personality. We predict psychological traits from digital footprints to explore how founder personality is associated with critical startup milestones. Observing 10,541 founder-startup dyads, we provide large-scale, ecologically valid evidence that founder personality is associated with outcomes across all phases of a venture's life (i.e., from raising the earliest funding round to exiting via acquisition or initial public offering). We find that openness and agreeableness are positively related to the likelihood of raising an initial round of funding (but unrelated to all subsequent conditional outcomes). Neuroticism is negatively related to all outcomes, highlighting the importance of founders' resilience. Finally, conscientiousness is positively related to early-stage investment, but negatively related to exit conditional on funding. While prior work has painted conscientiousness as a major benefactor of performance, our findings highlight a potential boundary condition: The fast-moving world of technology startups affords founders with lower or moderate levels of conscientiousness a competitive advantage when it comes to monetizing their business via acquisition or IPO.

The Effect of Sexual Objectification on Dishonesty

In daily life, women often experience various forms of sexual objectification such as being stared at in public settings and receiving unsolicited sexual remarks on social media. These incidents could have damaging effects on women's physical and mental health, necessitating ways to respond to the experience. Researchers have provided burgeoning evidence demonstrating the effects of sexual objectification on various psychological, emotional, and cognitive outcomes. However, relatively few researchers have tested how sexually objectified people behaviorally react to the objectification experience. To address this knowledge gap, we aimed to test whether sexual objectification increases dishonesty among women and reveal one potential underlying psychological mechanism. We predicted that sexual objectification increases dishonesty serially through higher levels of relative deprivation and lower levels of self-regulation. We conducted two experiments (valid N = 150 and 279, respectively) to test the predictions and found that participants who experienced sexual objectification reported greater dishonest tendencies than those who did not (Experiments 1 and 2). Moreover, relative deprivation and self-regulation serially mediated the effect of sexual objectification on dishonesty (Experiment 2). In the current experiments, we highlight the essential role of relative deprivation and self-regulation in explaining how sexual objectification increases dishonesty and various related forms of antisocial behavior.

Exploring the relationship between personality, morality and lying: A study based on the person-centred approach

Past research explored the relationship between personality, moral disengagement, and deception and found a general trend showing that the lower people score on the big five personality factors, but the higher they score on moral disengagement and Machiavellianism, the higher their lying tendency. However, a limitation of past research is that it has usually adopted a variable-centred approach, whereas a person-centred approach might describe people in more detail and provide further insight into the relationship between personality and morality. In the present study, we collected data from 316 participants and asked them to fill an on-line questionnaire which included measures on personality, moral disengagement, and lying tendency (perceived lying ability, frequency, negativity and contextuality). The latter was measured via the newly developed Structure of Deception (SoD) scale (Makowski et al., Current Psychology, 2021). We had to aims. First, to validate an Italian version of the SoD, which showed a good factor structure, gender measurement invariance, and good construct and criterion validity. Second, to explore the association between personal characteristics and lying tendency. Personality and morality scores were combined to obtain subpopulations of participants by a mean of cluster analysis. We obtained four clusters, one of which was marked by high Machiavellianism and moral disengagement but low scores on the personality factors, and one of which showed the opposite trend. The results also showed that cluster membership, and hence personal characteristics, was associated with lying tendency. The person-centred approach can be applied in research on lying. Limitations of the study and future suggestions are also discussed.

Associations of Personality Traits with Internet Addiction: A Cross-Cultural Meta-Analysis with a Multilingual Approach

With a novel multilingual approach, this cross-cultural meta-analysis study investigated the associations between personality traits and Internet addiction. Articles were identified and retrieved by searching through general and language-specific databases, and thereafter reviewed for inclusion based on the selection criteria. Random effects models with the Hartung-Knapp-Sidik-Jonkman method were used to examine the associations of Internet addiction with seven personality traits: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Psychoticism, and Lie (OCEAN-PL). Forest plots with summary statistics were produced to inspect the between-study heterogeneity. Subgroup analysis was performed to further determine the contributions of moderators (geographic region, population subgroup, scales for assessing personality traits and Internet addiction, and language of publication) to the observed between-study heterogeneity. Funnel plots and Egger's test were used to detect possible small-study effects. A sample of 34,438 participants from 37 studies (24 from Asia) were included for data analysis. The major languages of publications of the selected articles were English and Asian languages. According to the pooled results, Internet addiction was associated positively with Neuroticism and Psychoticism, but negatively with Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Lie. Geographic region and language of publication significantly moderated the associations of Internet addiction with Agreeableness and Neuroticism, and Openness and Extraversion, respectively. No significant small-study effect was present for all OCEAN-PL personality traits, except Neuroticism. In conclusion, the Internet addiction group is relatively more neurotic and psychotic, and less conscientious, extraverted, agreeable, and untruthful than the nonaddiction group. A multilingual approach is useful for improving the search strategies for systematic reviews, cross-cultural meta-analyses in particular.

Profiling the Interrogee: Applying the Person-Centered Approach in Investigative Interviewing Research

In the past, deception detection research has explored whether there were specific personal characteristics that were related to lying and found that factors such as personality and morality are indeed related to lying. However, past research has usually focused on a variable-centered approach. Yet, a person-centered might be more suitable here as it allows for the study of people in an integrative manner. In this experiment, 673 students completed a questionnaire which included measures of the five factors of personality, the level of moral disengagement, the perceived cognitive load when lying, lying strategies, frequency of lying and the LiES scale, a tool measuring the tendency to tell self-serving, altruistic and vindicative lies. We performed a Latent Profile Analysis to integrate personality, moral disengagement, and perceived cognitive load scores into specific profiles. Then, we related profile membership to lying behavior. We obtained four profiles, and found that extraversion, moral disengagement, and the perceived cognitive load contributed most to profile differences. We also found that lying frequency did not differ across profiles, whereas lying tendency did. In conclusion, our results suggest that several facets of the individual play a joint role in lying behavior, and that adopting a person-centered approach might be a good strategy to explore the role of interpersonal differences in lie detection research.