Do women lie to their boyfriends? Popular culture would have us believe that they do. Once again, AskMen.com gives me a great example of this stereotype in their article “5 Lies All Women Tell”. The 5 lies they say all women tell are (1) I’m not mad at you, (2) I don’t mind if you go to strip clubs with the boys, (3) I’m just not ready for a boyfriend right now, (4) I don’t mind picking up the tab tonight; you always pay anyway, and (5) That was fucking great!
Kaplar & Gordon (2004) did a study called “The Enigma of Altruistic Lying: Perspective Differences in What Motivates and Justifies Lie Telling Within Romantic Relationships”. They recruited 122 undergraduate psychology students to write two narratives: one of a time they lied to a significant other and another of a time they were lied to by their significant other. For the purpose of this study, lying was defined as “both purposely leaving out relevant information and telling someone something that is not true.” Participants also filled out a questionnaire to determine whether they thought the lie was egotistical or altruistic. Their hypotheses were that (1) lie-tellers would consider their lie to be more altruistic than the lie-receiver, (2) lie-tellers would consider themselves to be honest people who got caught up in a lie by mistake, (3) lie-tellers would be more likely to consider their lie situational while the lie-receiver would attribute it to the lie-teller’s personality, (4) lie-tellers will report that their lie was justified the lie-receiver overreacted, and (5) the lie-teller will blame the lie-receiver for the incident. Because this was a within-participants design, all participants were both the lie-teller and the lie-receiver. They found that lie-receivers did not find the lie to be coming from a kind place as much as the lie-tellers did. They also looked at gender and found no differences in male and female lie narratives.
The AskMen article does say that some of these lies will be told in order to protect the boyfriends feelings, which is consistent with the Kaplar & Gordon (2004) research, but they also say that women may tell these lies to cover up how “pathetically needy” they are-another aspect of the Crazy Girl stereotype. Furthermore, Kaplar & Gordon found no differences in gender, even though AskMen.com insinuates that women lie to their boyfriends more.
References
Kaplar, M. E., & Gordon, A. K. (2004). The enigma of altruistic lying: Perspective differences in what motivates and justifies lie telling within romantic relationships. Personal Relationships, 11(4), 489-507. doi:10.1111/j.1475-6811.2004.00094.x
