Japan: Narcissism encourages guilt and therefore inhibits lying behavior

Daiku Y, Serota KB, Levine TR (2021) A few prolific liars in Japan: Replication and the effects of Dark Triad personality traits. PLoS ONE 16(4): e0249815. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249815

Abstract: Truth-Default Theory (TDT) predicts that across countries and cultures, a few people tell most of the lies, while a majority of people lie less frequently than average. This prediction, referred to as “a few prolific liars,” is tested in Japan. The study further investigated the extent to which the Dark Triad personality traits predict the frequency of lying. University students (N = 305) reported how many times they lied in the past 24 hours and answered personality questions. Results indicate that the few prolific liars pattern is evident in Japan thereby advancing TDT. Results also show that Japanese frequent liars tend to have Dark Triad personality traits, but the nature of the findings may be unique to Japan. Results of the generalized linear model suggest that the Dark Triad components of Machiavellianism and psychopathy exacerbate lying behavior by reducing the guilt associated with lying. However, narcissism encourages guilt and therefore inhibits lying behavior with both direct and indirect effects. These narcissism findings appear to contradict prior studies but stem from use of a more appropriate statistical analysis or the Japanese context.

Discussion

The purpose of this study was to test the few prolific liars predictions in Japan and to examine these prolific liars’ personality traits. Consistent with TDT predictions, the results documented the existence of the few prolific liars pattern in the current sample of Japanese students. Moreover, the results demonstrate that people high in Machiavellianism and psychopathy reported more lying, mediated by lowering guilt, while people high in narcissism reported less lying through both direct and indirect paths. Although we cannot fully establish the causal relationships with only this study, the results suggest that people high in Machiavellianism or psychopathy may be inclined to tell more lies due to reduced feelings of guilt and that people high in narcissism may tell fewer lies due to increased guilt. The reverse causal order alternative is that the act of lying reduces guilt causing Machiavellianism scores to increase. While it is possible that people who lie frequently come to experience less guilt over time, and as a consequence, rate themselves as higher on Machiavellianism and psychopathy, this seems less plausible than personality being the antecedent.

Consistent with prior studies, the distribution of self-reported lies is extremely skewed, indicating the existence of a few prolific liars in our sample. The average lying frequency was similar to that reported by prior studies, such as DePaulo et al. [1], Murai [2], and Serota and Levine [8]. Most participants reported five or fewer lies in the past 24 hours and only a few people reported six or more lies. Importantly, prior results demonstrate that the few prolific liar phenomenon is not an artifact of the self-reporting methodology. Halevy et al. [11] showed that the self-reported number of lies correlates with behavioral indices of dishonesty in a laboratory and in our data, eliminating low-confidence participants does not change the overall finding. Therefore, the self-reported results appear to represent a reliable index and the universality of the “few prolific liars” module of TDT.

TDT seeks to provide a pan-cultural account of human deceptive communication. Because TDT predictions are not culturally bound, it is critical to test TDT in a variety of cultures. Only by testing TDT in various countries can the robust nature of TDT’s predictions be ascertained. Although TDT studies have previously been conducted in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, this research is the first to test TDT in Japan. The current findings add to the cultural span of TDT by replicating effects documented elsewhere.

Investigating the personality traits of the prolific liars using GLM yielded a more complex outcome than prior results. These results showed that Machiavellianism and psychopathy are associated with more lying, similar to prior studies [11, 14]. This suggests the two effects are robust enough to endure more rigorous statistical analysis. In addition, this study revealed that the effects are mediated by reduced feeling of guilt. Those high on Machiavellianism and psychopathy are thought to have lower guilt than ordinal people do, and this lower inhibition contributes to telling more lies.

These results, that the few prolific liars are Machiavellian and psychopathic people, may shed light on the fundamental question, “why is the distribution so skewed?” from an evolutionary perspective. Previous research found that people who have Dark Triad personality traits take the fast life strategy characterized by short-term mating, selfishness, and other antisocial manifestations [15, 26] and that they account for only a small part of the entire population [27]. Considering these findings, one possible explanation for the skewed distribution of lying is that the few prolific liars are people who adopted the fast life strategy. In modern society, the traits are seen as undesirable because most people do not adopt this strategy [28] but prolific lying may help those who adopt the fast life strategy to survive and reproduce. This evolutionary system may be the reason why we see the few prolific liars across cultures. This hypothesis is speculative but warrants further investigation.

However, somewhat surprisingly, narcissism had a negative effect on the frequency of lying. That is, results show people high in narcissism tell fewer lies. This result is contradictory to prior studies, which may result from the choice of statistical analyses. Jonason et al. [14] calculated the correlation coefficients and partial regression coefficients, finding a slightly positive correlation between narcissism and the number of lies. Similarly, Zvi and Elaad [12] found a positive relationship between narcissism and lying behavior. However, without accounting for the extremely skewed distribution of lie frequency, calculating Pearson correlations may yield misleading results, especially Type I errors [29]. As this and prior studies [7, 8, 11] indicated, approximately 40–60% of people asked about lying frequency report no lies during any specific 24-hour period. Therefore, the distribution for lying frequency will be positively skewed and substantial (Skewness > 1.0 is considered substantial; for the Japan data Skewness = 12.67, SE of Skewness = 0.14). This inclination is not only an extreme deviation from the assumption of normality, it is wholly unsuitable for calculating Pearson’s correlations, which assume linear relationships between two variables. In addition, just a few prolific liars might exorbitantly increase the correlation, as Pearson’s correlation is very sensitive to outliers. For these reasons, Pearson’s correlations with lie frequency may be unreliable when the skewed distribution is considered. Spearman’s rank correlation suppresses the effect of outliers.

Moreover, we found the negative effect for narcissism (i.e., narcissists tell fewer lies) when controlling Machiavellianism and psychopathy. While the zero-order correlations of narcissism include the effects of Machiavellianism and psychopathy, the result of the negative binomial regression partials out the effects of them when assessing the effect of narcissism. Thus, it may be safe to say that the negative coefficient of narcissism is the pure effect of narcissism on lying frequency. This may be the reason why we had the negative coefficient while we had a positive correlation between lying frequency and narcissism in Spearman’s rank correlation.

This negative effect of narcissism on lying is interpretable from three perspectives. The first is narcissism’s relative brightness. Narcissism is considered the least dark trait among the three [30]. Narcissism has weaker relationships with anti-social behavior [15, 31, 32] and the ability to lie [33] than do either Machiavellianism or psychopathy. Considering these findings, perhaps it is not so surprising that narcissism had a different effect from Machiavellianism and psychopathy in our study. Narcissism is characterized by entitlement, superiority, and dominance [14]. The narcissist’s priority is keeping self-image positive, and frequent lying may hurt self-image. If so, it may be a reason why those higher on narcissism tell fewer lies.

The second consideration is lying types. Our study did not classify lying types, so all kinds of lies are included in the analysis. Narcissists are thought to tell lies mostly about themselves to make a good impression on others. In fact, Jonason et al. [14] revealed that narcissism had its strongest relationship with the number of self-gain lies. Future research might benefit by classifying lie types as well as motives to lie.

The third possibility is cultural differences. Narcissism scores may differ across countries. Foster et al. [34] found that narcissism was higher in an individualistic culture than in a collectivistic culture; the United States, especially, produced the highest levels of reported narcissism. According to their study, Japan’s narcissism is predicted to be lower than that of the United States. Moreover, Japan is thought to have a shame culture rather than a guilt culture [35], suggesting that in Japan, social behavior might be determined by feelings of shame rather than guilt. Replicating the current study in a western country could facilitate a comparative cultural analysis.

Further research on the subtypes of narcissism also might be useful for interpreting this result. Narcissism can be divided into vulnerable narcissism—associated with introversion, defensiveness, anxiety and vulnerability to life’s traumas—and grandiose narcissism—associated with extraversion, self-assurance, exhibitionism, and aggression [36]. Previous research has revealed that grandiose narcissism is more strongly related to unethical behaviors than vulnerable narcissism [16]. The Dark Triad Dirty Dozen, which we used in the current study, does not measure the two types separately. Consequently, there is a possibility that the DTDD is primarily measuring vulnerable narcissism and that this form of narcissism, which is associated with a positive self-image, is more likely to inhibit lying.

The current study has three limitations to consider. First, our analysis did not control for the frequency of social interaction. The Dark Triad personality traits are positively correlated with extraversion among the Big Five personality traits [13]. Thus, an alternative explanation for high lie frequency could be that prolific liars have more social interactions in a day rather than having an anti-social personality. However, studies that have controlled for frequency of interaction [1, 37] found prolific liars even with a known rate of interaction. Future research may resolve this point by controlling for interaction rate.

Second, the results of this study are based solely on lies reported by college students. To improve the generalizability of the results, a study obtaining lie reports from a broader sample could be conducted. Fortunately, research in other countries is informative about how student samples are similar and different from more broadly representative samples. Research has documented the few prolific liars pattern (i.e., positive skew) in studies of both students and adult samples [7, 8, 10]. The primary difference is that students tend to tell more lies on average. It is reasonable to expect that we would find a similarly skewed distribution among Japanese adults even though they may tell fewer lies, overall.

Third, the measurement of the Dark Triad used in this study may be insufficient. The Japanese version of the DTDD has differences from the original English version (e.g., lower reliability of psychopathy). The differences are most evident in Machiavellianism and psychopathy, but due to the strict translation procedures they are not substantial. It appears unlikely that the divergence for narcissism may have resulted from a translation problem.

Future research might examine other TDT propositions in Japan and other countries in Asia. Truth-bias has been documented in Korea [6] and Murai [2] found that Japanese participants reported (knowingly) receiving far few lies each day than they told. Both prior findings are consistent with TDT’s applicability in Asian countries. Future research might provide a more direct test of the truth-default using the method developed by Clare and Levine [5] thus investigating if thoughts of deception come to mind unprompted. Given known cultural differences (e.g., collectivism versus individualism; power distance), TDT’s predications regarding pan-cultural deception motives and the projected motive model also need to be tested across Asia.

Overall, this research clearly indicates the existence of a few prolific liars in a student sample in Japan. As observed in other parts of the world, most Japanese people tell few or no lies on a given day and a small number of people, prolific liars, tell the majority of lies. Additionally, the study found that lying frequency increased with higher Machiavellianism and psychopathy scores, and that these factors are mediated by feelings of guilt. Documenting the mediating effects of guilt expands our knowledge about lying and its prediction. This mediating effect suggests that people with certain personality traits such as Machiavellianism may feel less guilty about lying and consequently have fewer inhibitions about lying. Practically, it may be effective to activate people’s feelings of guilt to suppress lying in real world. We further observed an unexpected effect of narcissism, which inhibited lying frequency. How narcissism affects lying should be investigated further.