Introduction

Pretty much all people lie at least occasionally and for different reasons. Obviously, this is of great interest.

Hart and colleagues (2019) list the following possible reasons:

  • protecting others

  • image enhancement

  • saving face

  • avoiding punishment

  • vindictiveness

  • privacy

  • entertainment

  • avoiding confrontation

  • instrumental gain

  • and maintaining

  • facilitating relationships

Hart and colleagues (2019) developed the Lying in Everyday Sitatuations Scale. It is abbreviated as LiES.

The authors give the following reasons for why the LiES scale is useful in psychological research projects:

"The LiES scale fills a void in the deception researcher’s toolbox by offering a brief, psycho- metrically sound measure of people’s penchant for mendacity in common contexts. The LiES scale can be used by researchers to study lying broadly, but it might also be used to assess mendacity in contexts such as the workplace, romantic relationships, and other contexts in which everyday lies are common. Perhaps this scale could be useful in the development of deception measures used in employment screen- ing, online dating websites, or forensic settings. In the broadening field of deception research, we hope that this tool will offer a great deal of utility" (p.351).

On a separate note, detecting lies is actually quite difficult, but one method that works is the so called Devil’s Advocate Method about which you can learn more here:

Scores in population

The study by Hart and colleagues (2019) does not list population averages. Fortunately, the Littrell and colleagues (2021) used the LiES and published their data. That study contains data from adults aged 18 to 73 in the US and Canada. There averages were as follows.

Type Possible range Average score all Men Women Sex difference?

Relational lying

1 to 7

3.79

3.86

3.72

No

Antisocial lying

1 to 7

1.90

2.10

1.66

Yes

Total score

1 to 7

2.85

2.98

2.69

Yes

Run the demo

Click here to run a demo of the survey

Legal stuff

It seems that the Lying in Everyday Situations Scale can be used for research, but you need to acknowledge the authors and their research paper when writing about it (Hart and colleagues (2019)).

Technically

This is a simple scale question with two subscales.

The survey code for PsyToolkit

Copy and paste this code to your PsyToolkit account if you want to use the scale in your own online research project
scale: agree
- Strongly *disagree*<br>1
- <br><br>2
- <br><br>3
- Neither agree nor disagree<br>4
- <br><br>5
- <br><br>6
- Strongly *agree*<br>7


l: relational
o: buildup
t: scale agree
q: *Instructions:* Everyone tells lies from time to time about various things.
We are interested in the lies that you tell.
For each of the following statements, indicate the degree to which you agree or
disagree that the statement accurately describes you.
Choose a response on the scale which runs from <b>disagree</b> to <b>agree</b>
- I lie in order to escape conflicts or disagreements with other people.
- I lie to hide the bad things I've done.
- I tell lies so I will not have confrontations with people.
- I lie in order to hide shameful things about myself.
- I lie to stay out of arguments with people.
- I lie in order to be friendly and cordial with others.
- I tell lies in order to spare another's feelings.

l: antisocial
o: buildup
t: scale agree
q: Instructions: Everyone tells lies from time to time about various things. We are interested in the
lies that you tell. For each of the following statements, indicate the degree to which you agree or
disagree that the statement accurately describes you.
- I lie in order to punish people.
- I lie in order to take people down.
- I lie for revenge.
- I use lies to attack people I don't like.
- I tell lies in order to hurt, annoy, or upset others.
- I lie because it is exciting.
- I lie to people because it is amusing.

l: relationalscore
t: set
- sum $relational

l: antisocialscore
t: set
- sum $antisocial

l: lies
t: set
- sum $relationalscore $antisocialscore

l: feedbacklies
t: info
q: Your scores on the LiES scales are:
Relational (ranges from 7-49): {$relationalscore}
Antisocial (ranges from 7-49): {$antisocialscore}
Total score (ranges from 14-98): {$lies}

References