Personality and deception: Are personality profiles associated with lying tendency and lying frequency?

Since the first studies on deception appeared in the research literature, researchers explored whether there were specific personality traits associated with lying. Factors such as the Dark Triad, social anxiety and the Five Factors of personality appeared to be correlated with deception. However, there is a lack of research considering how personality and other factors such as moral disengagement and the perceived cognitive load when lying integrate and how they are related to lying. Accordingly, in this study, we explored how emerging profiles based on the five factors of personality (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience), the level of moral disengagement and the perceived cognitive load when lying were related to lying. Four different profiles emerged. Results indicated that the preferred lying strategy and the amount of several types of lies told in the last 24 hours did not differ across profiles. On the contrary, the four profiles were differently associated with the tendency of telling self-oriented and vindicative lies and with the importance participants attributed to verbal strategies when lying, but not to the importance attributed to nonverbal strategies. In conclusion, this first attempt suggests that people could be grouped into specific “lying profiles” according to their personality, level of moral disengagement and perceived cognitive load when lying, and that the relative pattern of scores seems to be related to lying tendency. However, the results of this study should be taken with caution. Future research is needed and should explore these aspects in more detail.