Few Prolific Liars

Few Prolific Liars

Reviewed by Faisal Zaidi

Most lies are told by a small number of people who lie often, while most people lie rarely.

What it is

The idea comes from survey work by Kim Serota, Timothy Levine and Franklin Boster, who asked about 1,000 adults how many lies they had told in the past day. Most reported none, and a small share of respondents accounted for a large share of all the lies reported, a skew that appeared again in a student sample. Levine builds the pattern into his truth-default account.

In effect

In the article on why people lie, it sets the average of one or two lies a day against how unevenly lying is spread across people.

What it does not say

It rests on self-reports, which may undercount lies. It does not say the frequent liars are a fixed type of person, and it does not say anything about any individual.

Sources

  1. Serota, K. B., Levine, T. R., & Boster, F. J. (2010). The prevalence of lying in America: Three studies of self-reported lies. Human Communication Research, 36(1), 2-25.
  2. Levine, T. R. Duped.