The relations between deception, narcissism and self-assessed lie- and truth-related abilities

Abstract

Seventy undergraduate students completed the Narcissistic Personality Inventory and the Lie- and Truth Ability Assessment Scale. They were then asked to share 100 points with an anonymous fellow student who was unaware of the amount of points designated for distribution. Participants were asked to allocate points to the other student bearing in mind that the transaction will be completed only if the other party accepts their offer. Participants’ goal was to retain as many points as possible, and for this end, they were permitted to tell the other person that fewer than 100 points were available for distribution. Both narcissistic features and lie-telling ability assessments predicted actual deception. Results suggest that the dominance of the truth telling bias is limited in a situation where no concrete victim is harmed by dishonesty. Self-assessed lying ability and features of narcissistic personality further challenge the intuitive truth telling model.

Keywords:

• concealment
• deception
• narcissism
• self-assessed lie-telling ability
• ultimatum game

Ethical standards

Declaration of conflicts of interest

Eitan Elaad has declared no conflicts of interest.

Shani Ben Hanania has declared no conflicts of interest.

Shachar Mazor has declared no conflicts of interest.

Liza Zvi has declared no conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in the present study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study