Development of A Self-Report Instrument For Assessing Deceptive Behaviors

The first goal of this project was to develop a self–report instrument for the assessment of deceptive behaviors. The second goal of this project was to investigate the relationship between personality and lying. We employed a multi–method approach to instrument development. After developing nine categories of deceptions, we created and administered a self-report instrument to undergraduate college students (Study 1) that assessed use of the categories as well as several self-report personality measures. We hypothesized, based on the results of Study 1, a structure to our data that broke up the personality variables into four factors and the lie categories into two factors. The instrument was revised and re–administered to a new group of undergraduate college students in Study 2. Our hypothesized structure was tested using structural equation modeling (SEM) and proposed relationships were, for the most part, supported. We suggest that categories of lying represent a hierarchy of broad to more specific types