I Love the Way You Lie: Investigating the Relationship Between Psychopathic Tendencies and Lying Behaviour

Lying is considered a common behaviour that individuals engage in on a daily basis. Prior research indicated that the presence of certain personality traits, such as psychopathy impacts the inclination to lie. I examined subclinical psychopathy, plus other variables, in predicting self-reported lying frequency, level of enjoyment received from lying, and motivations for lying in different contexts, in a sample of undergraduate (n = 91) and community (n = 61) participants. I hypothesized that individuals with subclinical psychopathy will have a greater tendency to lie across situations and enjoy it. Subclinical psychopathy was the only consistent predictor for all lying behaviour measures across samples. However, psychopathy did not predict lying behaviour across all contexts in which one could engage in deception. These findings enhance our understanding that specific features of psychopathy exist in subclinical, non-forensic populations, and they can predict behaviours such as lying. Keywords: psychopathy, lying behaviour