Good Liars Are Neither ‘Dark’ Nor Self-Deceptive

Abstract

Deception is a central component of the personality 'Dark Triad' (Machiavellianism, Psychopathy and Narcissism). However, whether individuals exhibiting high scores on Dark Triad measures have a heightened deceptive ability has received little experimental attention. The present study tested whether the ability to lie effectively, and to detect lies told by others, was related to Dark Triad, Lie Acceptability, or Self-Deceptive measures of personality using an interactive group-based deception task. At a group level, lie detection accuracy was correlated with the ability to deceive others—replicating previous work. No evidence was found to suggest that Dark Triad traits confer any advantage either to deceive others, or to detect deception in others. Participants who considered lying to be more acceptable were more skilled at lying, while self-deceptive individuals were generally less credible and less confident when lying. Results are interpreted within a framework in which repeated practice results in enhanced deceptive ability.

Correlates of narcissism, self‐reported lies, and self‐assessed abilities to tell and detect lies, tell truths, and believe others

“…Relevant research on narcissism and deception has been frequently performed in the context of studying the dark triad and using the short‐D3 measure (e.g., Azizli et al, ; Giammarco et al, ). No relation of the dark triad traits with actual ability to detect deception was found (Wissing & Reinhard, ; Wright, Berry, Catmur, & Bird, ). However, total dark triad scores were positively associated with confidence in deception detection ability.…”

The Dark Triad and the PID-5 Maladaptive Personality Traits: Accuracy, Confidence and Response Bias in Judgments of Veracity

“…In the former case, the dyadic dynamics of a co-evolutionary arms race between predatory, defecting cheaters and cooperators arises (Dawkins and Krebs, 1979 ; Mealey, 1995 )—cheater detection is conceptualized as an evolved mechanism to protect against exploitation in social exchange situations (Cosmides and Tooby, 1992 )—, in the latter case “wizards” of deception detection and production should result. Empirical support for a deception-general ability currently only exists in the form of found negative correlations between detectability as sender and discrimination ability as receiver ( r s = −0.35, −0.47; Wright G. R. T. et al, 2012 ; Wright et al, 2015 ).…”

Examining Sender and Judge Variability in Honesty Assessments and Deception Detection Accuracy: Evidence for a Transparent Liar but No Evidence of Deception-General Ability

“…They propose a deception-general ability and report a correlation of r = −.35 between judge accuracy (ability) and transparency (Wright et al, 2012(Wright et al, , 2013; both articles report the same data from the same N = 51 participants). In a replication (N = 75), the correlation between sender transparency and judge ability was r = −.47 (Wright, Berry, Catmur, & Bird, 2015).…”