Let’s be honest: everybody lies. The question is whether people believe what you say. And a new study shows that your trustworthiness depends not just on the words you use, but on who you are and how you say them. In this month’s Journal of Language and Social Psychology, Marilyn Boltz and colleagues delve into the intersection of gender, speech patterns and deception. “We found that people perceive women to lie less than men and that they perceive men and women to tell different kinds of lies,” says Boltz, a professor of psychology at Haverford College. “And we found some effects of response timing.” (More on Time.com:5 Ways to Beat the Winter Doldrums) Diary studies — in which participants are trusted to record their own falsehoods — have shown that men and women both admit fibbing in 20% to 35% of their social interactions. They’ve also shown that men tell — and are told — more “self-lies,” those that benefit the liar. Women, meanwhile, tell and are told more “other-lies,” those contrived for the benefit of others. It’s the difference between “You have a zit? I can’t even see it” and “That woman? I’ve never seen her before in my life.” Boltz’ study, complementing the diary confessions, found that when the reality was unclear people were also more likely to perceive women as telling other-lies, and men as telling self-lies. Participants in Boltz’ study listened to a recorded conversation between “Jim” and “Claire,” a couple in a serious relationship. During the exchange, they were asked to determine whether each response was in earnest. Here’s an excerpt: Jim: Were you happy with the steak? Claire: Yeah, it was really good.* Was it your own recipe for the marinade? [*potential other-lie] Jim: Yeah, it was.** It’s one I’ve been trying to perfect over the years. [**potential self-lie] Whether or not listeners believed Jim’s and Claire’s statements depended in part on the timing of their speech. Boltz found that if the speaker responded after a longer-than-normal pause and spoke more quickly than the![]()
