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Deception in romantic
relationships: Subjective
estimates of success at deceiving
and attitudes toward deception
Susan D. Boon
University of Calgary

Beverly A. McLeod
Mount Royal College

ABSTRACT

Participants (N = 97) completed a questionnaire about deceptive communication in romantic relationships. Responses
indicated that people generally believe that they are fairly successful in their efforts to deceive their partners and, moreover,
that they believe they are more successful in deceiving their
partners than their partners are at deceiving them. Results
also suggest that attitudes toward dishonesty in romantic
relationships are neither as simple nor straightforward as the
costs associated with discovery might lead one to expect. In
addition, participants beliefs about the importance of honesty
in romantic relationships and their perceptions regarding their
own and their partners success at deceiving one another predicted their use of certain modes of deception (i.e., falsification), as well as their responses to suspected deception (both
how they responded when they suspected their partner may
be lying and how they reacted to a partners suspicions that
they had been dishonest).
KEY WORDS: attitudes towards deception deception success at

deceiving

This article discusses research on two aspects of deceptive communication

that at present lie largely as uncharted territory within the relationships
Portions of this article were presented at the meeting of the International Network on Personal
Relationships in Louisville, Kentucky, 2529 June 1999. The authors would like to thank two
anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier draft of this article. All correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Susan D. Boon, Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, 2500 University Dr. NW, Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4, Canada. [E-mail:
sdboon@ucalgary.ca]. Dan Canary was the Action Editor on this article.
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships Copyright 2001 SAGE Publications (London,
Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi), Vol. 18(4): 463476. [02654075 (200108) 18:4; 018204]

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literature. Our goal is to inspire others to broaden their research interests

to include investigations in these areas.
Subjective estimates of success at deceiving
In a recent review of the literature on deceptive communication, McCornack (1997) argued that scholars should direct their inquiries toward
four observable characteristics of naturalistic deception. Central among
these is the successful nature of most deceptive discourse. Yet it is the accuracy of detection not success at deceiving that has most often attracted
researchers attention.
Not surprisingly, this emphasis on detection is evident in the literature on
deception in interpersonal relationships as well. Consistent with the broader
tradition of research on deception, many of the studies examining deception in close relationships have focused on issues surrounding accuracy of
detection (e.g., Burgoon, Buller, Ebesu, & Rockwell, 1984; Kalbfleisch,
1992; McCornack & Levine, 1990b; McCornack & Parks, 1986). Generally
speaking, these studies have found that people in romantic relationships are
quite confident in their ability to detect when their partners are deceiving
them (Levine & McCornack, 1992; McCornack & Parks, 1986). However,
these same studies also show that partners confidence in this regard is
unwarranted. In actuality, partners in romantic relationships are no more
accurate at judging when the others message is deceptive than are people
in general accurate at detecting when a strangers message is deceptive. In
either case, accuracy rates hover slightly above chance (DePaulo, Stone, &
Lassiter, 1985; Zuckerman, DePaulo, & Rosenthal, 1981), dispelling the
notion that romantic partners greater familiarity might translate into
enhanced accuracy of detection (e.g., Knapp, 1984, cited in McCornack &
Parks, 1986).
Given that low accuracy of detection suggests high levels of successful
deception, it seems surprising to us that researchers have, for the most part,
overlooked questions concerning intimates perceptions of how often their
efforts to deceive a partner meet with success. DePaulo and Kashy (1998)
report that their participants believed that lies told to close others were
more likely to have been discovered than lies told to less intimate others.
However, a number of important questions concerning partners perception
of the success of deceptive messages remain unexplored at this time. For
example, how confident are people that they can deceive a romantic partner
without raising his or her suspicions? How successful do people believe their
romantic partners are at deceiving them? And is peoples faith in their
ability to deceive a romantic partner related to their beliefs regarding their
partners ability to deceive them?
To explore some of these issues, this investigation posed the following
research question:
RQ1: To what extent do romantic partners believe they and their partners are successful at deceiving one another?

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Attitudes about deception in romantic relationships

The nature of peoples general attitudes towards dishonesty in romantic
relationships constitutes a second important, but largely neglected, area of
inquiry in the relationships literature. We know that North American
society generally frowns upon deception and, moreover, that those who are
caught deceiving, or are suspected of deception, risk censure and social
stigmatization (Camden, Motley, & Wilson, 1984; DePaulo, Kashy, Kirkendol, Wyer, & Epstein, 1996; Hample, 1984; Kalbfleisch & Vogl, 1993). It
is less clear, however, that attitudes toward deception in romantic relationships are equally denunciatory. On the one hand, given that intimacy and
trust are often viewed as defining features of such relationships, we might
expect that acts of deception occurring in romantic relationships would
elicit even greater disapprobation than acts of deception that occur in other
contexts. On the other hand, individuals beliefs about deception in a
relationship context may be tempered by their concerns about how the truth
may affect a partner and thereby the relationship (cf. DePaulo & Bell, 1996;
McCornack, 1997; Turner, Edgley, & Olmstead, 1975). In this case, we
might expect participants attitudes about deceiving a romantic partner to
be more conditional disapproving of deception under some circumstances
but approving in others. To examine these possibilities, we posed our second
research question:
RQ2: How favorable are individuals attitudes towards the use of
deception in their romantic relationships and to what extent do such
attitudes reflect conditional approval?
Deceivers face higher stakes when their deceptive messages are aimed at
targets with whom they share a relationship rather than at strangers. Turner
et al.s (1975) seminal research on the motives that underlie deception (or,
in their words, information control) was significant in demonstrating that
getting caught is not the only concern that occupies a speakers mind as he
or she deliberates whether to tell the truth. Speakers worry, too, about the
real harm that honest disclosure may cause. Our research expands on this
work by directly assessing peoples attitudes toward deception (Turner et
al.s conclusions in this regard were based on inferences, not direct assessment), and in particular their attitudes toward deception as it occurs within
the confines of romantic partnerships.
Assessing the predictive value of estimated success and attitudes
toward deception
Two additional research questions examined perceptions of success and
attitudes toward deception as potential predictors of self-reported deceptive behavior. Conceptually, there are good reasons to believe that each of
these variables should relate broadly to parameters of deceptive communication. For the purposes of this research, however, we limited our focus to
choice of deceptive strategy and responses to suspected acts of deception as
the criterion variables of interest.

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Predicting choice of deceptive strategy. Research suggests that people consider certain modes of deception more effective than others in ensuring
information control (Turner et al., 1975). It would seem surprising if there
were not corresponding variation in peoples views regarding how safe
various strategies are in terms of minimizing the risk of detection. In either
case, individuals judgments concerning how likely they are to succeed in
their efforts to deceive a partner may predict the particular approach they
use on occasions when telling the truth seems out of the question. One of
the more obvious possibilities is that individuals reliance on those methods
of deception deemed most safe will decrease as their confidence in their
ability to deceive a partner increases.
Attitudes toward deception in romantic relationships may also relate to
peoples selection among the various means of deceiving a partner. The
more disparaging are individuals attitudes toward deception, for instance,
the more they may prefer to use milder forms of deception such as omission
or distortion in comparison with more blatant forms such as falsification.
Predicting responses to suspicion. Finally, whether we consider how individuals respond when their partners question their truthfulness or, alternatively, how they respond when they harbor doubts about their partners
honesty, perceptions of success and attitudes toward deception in romantic
relationships would seem important predictors to examine. For example,
the more people believe they can succeed in pulling the wool over their partners eyes, the more apt they may be to redouble their efforts to maintain
the deception, rather than confess, when confronted by a suspicious partner.
Similarly, the more people credit their partners with success at deceiving
them, the more they may respond to their own feelings of suspicion with
tactics designed specifically to uncover the truth.
Attitudes toward deception may also predict responses to suspicious
communications. The more condemning their attitudes toward deception in
romantic relationships, the more people may be inclined to confess when their
partners express doubts concerning the veracity of their messages. Greater
disapproval of dishonesty among romantic partners may also increase the
odds that individuals will respond in an accusing and confrontational manner
when they suspect that their partner has tried to deceive them.
To explore the predictive relations among perceptions of success, attitudes about deception in romantic relationships, and (i) choice of deceptive
strategy and (ii) responses to suspicion, we posed the following research
questions:
RQ3: Do individuals beliefs about success (i.e., about their own and
their partners ability to deceive each other) and/or their attitudes
toward deception in romantic relationships predict the types of strategies they use to deceive their partners?
RQ4: Do individuals beliefs about success and/or their attitudes
toward deception in romantic relationships predict their responses to
suspected deception (i.e., their own and others)?

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Method
Participants
As part of a class exercise, 107 undergraduate psychology students (77 females
and 30 males) completed a questionnaire about deception in romantic relationships. All participants were currently involved in heterosexual romantic
relationships at the time of the study (n = 73) or had been involved in such a
relationship in the past (n = 34). Participants ranged in age from 18 to 47 years
(M = 24.2, SD = 6.6). The mean length of the relationship on which participants
responses were based was 56.4 months (SD = 61.7) for those reporting on
current relationships and 30.6 months (SD = 44.9) for those reporting on past
relationships.
Materials and procedure
The first page of the questionnaire defined deceptive communication as follows:
Deceptive communication is any verbal or nonverbal message that one
partner sends with the intent of leading the other partner to a belief or
conclusion that the sender considers to be less than absolutely true or less
than totally complete. A deceptive or misleading message may involve
providing information that is either untrue or has been exaggerated or distorted in some manner, or may involve deliberately omitting information
such that the partner is led to an incorrect conclusion or belief.
Immediately following this definition, participants were instructed to base their
responses on their current romantic relationship or, if they were not romantically involved at the time of the study, on a past relationship. In either case, they
checked appropriately labeled boxes at the bottom of the first page to indicate
the nature of the relationship that served as their target relationship.
Subjective estimates of success. Two parallel items assessed respondents
beliefs regarding their own and their partners success in deceiving. Respondents used a 7-point scale with endpoints labeled 1 = never and 7 = always to
indicate their responses to the items In general, how frequently do you think
that your misleading messages are (were) successful? (i.e., how often do you
think that your partner fails (failed) to detect your miscommunications?) and
In general, how frequently do you think that your partners misleading messages are (were) successful? (i.e., how often do you think that you fail (failed)
to detect your partners miscommunications?).
Attitudes toward honesty in romantic relationships. Three items assessed participants beliefs about the importance of complete honesty in romantic
relationships. Participants used a 7-point scale with endpoints 1 = not important
to 7 = extremely important to indicate their response to the question How
important is complete honesty in a romantic relationship? They also indicated
their answer to the question Is it necessary for the success of a romantic
relationship that the partners are completely honest with each other all the
time? by checking response options labeled yes, no, and it depends on the
situation. Finally, they completed a dichotomous (yes/no) forced-choice item
that asked them Should you ever mislead your romantic partner about
anything? Those who answered in the affirmative completed the follow-up

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question, When is it better to mislead your partner than to be completely

honest?
Modes of deception. Participants completed a brief checklist concerning the
strategies they use (had used) to mislead their partners. The items in this
checklist were based loosely on typologies used by Metts (1989) and DePaulo
et al. (1996). The five options were state something as true that isnt true, make
a true statement but say it in a way to make your partner believe it is not true
(i.e., say it in a joking or sarcastic way), communicate an untrue message
nonverbally (e.g., looked happy when you were not), deliberately omit
information or fail to mention something so as to lead your partner to a false
belief, and exaggerate or distort information so as to lead your partner to a false
belief. Participants were instructed to check as many of these options as
applied to themselves.
Strategies for dealing with suspicion. Participants completed a checklist concerning how they would respond if (or had responded when) they suspected that
their romantic partners were being less than honest with them. The five options
in the checklist (derived via discussion among the authors) included ignore the
situation (do nothing), ask questions/probe for more information, accuse the
partner of not being completely honest, set traps to try to catch the partner in the
lie, and seek information from other sources (e.g., searched their things, talked to
others, checked on their whereabouts). Participants were instructed to check as
many of these options as applicable. We also included an open-ended question
that shifted the focus from participants suspicions about their partners messages to partners suspicions about participants messages by asking them to
describe how they had responded when (or would respond if) their partner was
suspicious of an untrue message that they had communicated to him/her. Two
coders (an undergraduate research assistant and a graduate student who was
not otherwise involved in this research) classified each of the responses to this
question into one of five categories derived from examination of the questionnaires (coders agreed on 91% of all classifications). Almost half (45%) of the
88 participants who responded to this question said they would confess. Other
frequent responses included adding to the story (22%), ignoring the situation
(10%), and changing the subject (8%). A small, but not inconsequential,
number of respondents said that they would respond to their partners suspicions by denying everything (6%).
Demographic information. Participants indicated their age, sex, and ethnicity
as well as the length of the relationship on which their responses to the questionnaire were based. As a check on how well they followed the instructions for
selecting a target relationship, we also asked them whether they were currently
involved in a romantic relationship.

Results
A small number (n = 10) of individuals who were currently involved in a romantic relationship at the time of the study chose to report on a past relationship.
These respondents were removed from the sample prior to analysis to eliminate
variation between those reporting on a past relationship attributable to

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differences in their current relationship status (i.e., presently involved versus

presently uninvolved). The final sample thus consisted of 97 participants including 63 individuals (47 females and 16 males) who completed the questionnaire
with reference to a current relationship and 34 (23 females and 11 males) who
responded on the basis of a past relationship.
All analyses reported below were first performed with sex and target relationship included as predictors to determine whether either variable influenced the
pattern of results obtained. However, given the absence of systematic effects for
either variable, we opted to present the simpler results of analyses performed
excluding them. The results of the analyses including sex and target relationship are available upon request from the first author.
RQ1: Subjective estimates of success
How successful do participants believe they are at misleading their partners and
how successful do they think their partners are at misleading them? A 2-partner
rating (own versus partner success) within-subjects ANOVA revealed a significant difference between how participants rated their own success at deceiving
their partner and how they rated their partners success at deceiving them,
F(1,96) = 22.60, p < .001. On average, participants believed that they are successful a little more than half of the time (M = 4.64, SD = 1.47) in their attempts
to mislead their partners. However, they credited their partners with significantly less success in their efforts at misleading them (M = 3.63, SD = 1.38).
Ratings of own success were weakly but positively correlated with ratings of
partner success, r = .27, p < .01.
RQ2: Attitudes toward dishonesty in romantic relationships
On average, respondents strongly endorsed the belief that complete honesty is
important in a romantic relationship (M = 6.11, SD = 1.04). However, when
asked if the success of a romantic relationship depends upon complete honesty
between the partners, only 27% of the sample responded in the affirmative. The
vast majority of participants (65%) expressed a more conditional point of view,
endorsing the option it depends on the situation. A full 7% responded no. In
addition, as further evidence of the conditional or contingent nature of peoples
beliefs about the acceptability of deception among romantic partners, 61
respondents (63%) replied in the affirmative when asked if a person should ever
mislead his/her romantic partner. The conditions under which these participants
thought it better to mislead a partner than to tell the truth included protecting
the partners feelings (59%), preventing damage to the relationship (14%), and
increasing or avoiding damage to the partners self-esteem (14%). Ten percent
of the participants said it was better to lie than to tell the truth if the deception
was minor, and 6% responded that it was better to mislead a partner than to
tell the truth if doing so avoided conflict.
RQ3: Predicting the mode of deception
RQ3 asked whether judgments of success at deception and attitudes toward dishonesty in romantic relationships predict the means by which intimates choose
to deceive their partners. To examine this question, we conducted a series of
logistic regression analyses with responses to the five items in the deception
strategy checklist (i.e., whether participants reported using each strategy)
serving as the criterion variables (in separate analyses) and ratings of own
success at deception and attitudes toward deception as the predictors. In the

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absence of a strong conceptual rationale justifying any particular contrast

among the yes, no, and it depends responses to the item that asked participants
whether it is necessary that romantic partners be completely honest with each
other all the time, we opted to exclude this item from analysis (in logistic regression, interpretation of effects for predictor variables with three or more levels
involves examination of the results of user-specified contrasts among the levels
i.e., yes versus the combination of no and it depends; see Tabachnick & Fidell,
1996). Therefore, only two of the three attitude items were included in the set
of predictors in the analyses reported below.
Results showed that neither perceived success nor attitudes toward deception
significantly predicted whether participants reported that they deceived their
partners by exaggerating or distorting information, by omitting or concealing
the truth, or via nonverbal means. However, analysis of the data for the remaining two modes of deception (i.e., falsification and using jokes or sarcasm)
revealed significant results. The more strongly participants endorsed the view
that complete honesty is important in a romantic relationship, the less likely
they were to report using falsification, B = 0.61, Wald 2 (1, N = 94) = 4.67,
p < .05, and the more likely they were to report using jokes and sarcasm to
deceive their partners, B = 0.63, Wald 2 (1, N = 94) = 6.12, p < .05. Participants
were also more likely to report using jokes and sarcasm as means of misleading
their partners as their confidence in their ability to deceive their partner
decreased, B = 0.41, Wald 2 (1, N = 94) = 5.66, p < .05.
RQ4: Predicting responses to suspicion
RQ4 asked whether judgments of success at deception and attitudes toward dishonesty in romantic relationships predict intimates responses to suspicion. In
the first set of logistic regression analyses conducted to examine this question,
responses to the five items in the suspicion checklist (i.e., whether participants
reported having engaged in each response) served as the criterion variables (in
separate analyses) and ratings of the partners ability to deceive and attitudes
toward deception (the two items used to test RQ3) served as the predictors.
Recall that the suspicion checklist assessed the nature of participants
responses on occasions when they believed they were the targets of deceptive
communications. Neither perceived success nor attitudes toward deception significantly predicted participants reports that they would ignore the situation,
probe for further information (i.e., ask questions), or set traps to catch their
partner in the lie. However, participants were somewhat more likely to report
both that they would accuse the partner of lying, B = 0.55, Wald 2 (1,
N = 95) = 3.19, p < .10, and that they would take steps to corroborate their suspicions (e.g., checking with their partners friends, searching their partners
things, and so on) to the extent that they believed that complete honesty is
important in a relationship, B = 0.46, Wald 2 (1, N = 95) = 2.92, p < .10.
The second set of analyses examined participants reactions when their partners suspected that they were being dishonest (i.e., participant as deceiver,
partner as suspicious target). Participants responses to the open-ended question (i.e., whether a given strategy was or was not reported in their response)
asking them how they would respond to this event served as the criterion variables (in separate analyses) and ratings of their own success at deception and
attitudes toward deception (the two items used to test RQ3) served as the predictors.
The more frequently participants believed they were successful in deceiving

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their partners, the more likely they were to report that they would respond to
a partners suspicions by adding to their story, B = 0.86, Wald 2 (1,
N = 95) = 4.05, p < .05, or denying that they were lying, B = 1.11, Wald 2 (1,
N = 95) = 7.02, p < .01, and the less likely they were to report that they would
ignore the situation, B = 0.73, Wald 2 (1, N = 95) = 5.98, p < .05. In addition,
participants were marginally more likely to claim that they would confess if suspected of deceiving the less they thought themselves capable of successfully
deceiving their partners, B = 0.27, Wald 2 (1, N = 95) = 2.98, p < .10, and the
more important they believed complete honesty to be, B = 0.44, Wald 2 (1,
N = 95) = 3.14, p < .10. Finally, participants who believed that occasions exist
in which it is better to mislead a partner than to tell the complete truth were
less likely than those who believed the contrary to report that they would
respond to a partners suspicions by continuing to lie, B = 1.63, Wald 2 (1,
N = 95) = 3.93, p < .05.

Discussion
Perceptions of success at deception
Consistent with previous findings which suggest that people think their
efforts to deceive others often meet with success (DePaulo et al., 1996), our
respondents reported that their romantic partners accepted over half of
their deceptive messages as truthful. Interestingly, they also believed that
they, themselves, were more successful at deceiving their partners than their
partners were at deceiving them.
There are a number of possible explanations for the high confidence our
respondents expressed in their ability to deceive their partners. One possibility is that they may, in fact, succeed in their efforts to deceive their partners about as often as they believe they do. Studies on accuracy of detection
show that, in general, people do only slightly better than chance when
judging the truthfulness of others messages (DePaulo et al., 1985; Levine
& McCornack, 1992; McCornack & Parks, 1986; Zuckerman et al., 1981).
Such findings suggest that individuals correctly identify a partners lies only
about half of the time. In this case, our participants estimates of their
success may in fact be fairly accurate representations of reality. Alternatively, deceivers might come to hold exaggerated beliefs about their success
at dissimulation if in the interests of either avoiding confrontation and
potential conflict and/or maintaining a climate of trust in the relationship
their partners sometimes choose to conceal their doubts concerning the
truthfulness of a disclosure (which our results suggest they do). Over the
course of numerous interactions of this sort, partners silence in this regard
could lead intimates to overestimate their abilities to deceive each other.
The fact that respondents believed that they were more successful at
deceiving their partners than their partners were at deceiving them may be
an effect of differential feedback. Respondents know when they are being
dishonest and know (or perhaps mistakenly believe) that at least some of
their efforts at deceptive communications are successful. However, they are
likely to detect accurately only some proportion of all their partners

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attempts to deceive them. Under these circumstances, we would expect

people to underestimate the frequency with which their partners succeed in
their efforts to manipulate the truth. After all, the only clear data they have
about their partners rate of success concern that fraction of the partners
deceptive messages they have discovered. More generally, we suspect that
participants tendency to ascribe less success to their partners than to themselves may be connected to participants beliefs about their ability to detect
when their partners are being dishonest. McCornack and Parks (1986)
showed that romantic partners confidence in their ability to detect each
others lies far outstripped their accuracy in actually distinguishing truthful
from deceptive messages. Accordingly, our respondents may have underestimated their partners success at deceiving them in part because they have
an inflated sense of their own ability to detect when their partners are dishonest. More research is needed to test these and other explanations for the
pattern of results we obtained. As we review below, this study suggests that
peoples decisions concerning which of several strategies to use to deceive
a romantic partner are informed by their level of confidence in their ability
to communicate a dishonest message without raising their partners suspicions. Our findings also suggest that individuals beliefs in their own and
their partners deceptive prowess affect how they respond when something
about a message smells fishy. To the extent that these are just two of many
aspects of deceptive communication that may be subject to the influence of
judgments of success, it will be important to determine whether the selfserving pattern of results we observed reflects a tendency for individuals to
overestimate their own abilities in the art of deception, to underestimate
their partners abilities in this regard, or both.
Attitudes toward deception
At first blush, our participants seem to hold rather contradictory attitudes
toward deception in romantic relationships. On the one hand, they
strongly endorsed the view that complete honesty is important in a romantic relationship. On the other hand, they were quick to identify conditions
under which honesty is not the best policy between partners (over twothirds responded in the affirmative when asked whether there are
occasions that demand that a person mislead his or her partner) and were
willing to place limits on the extent to which they believed relational
success depends on full and honest disclosure (less than one-third agreed
with the position that a romantic relationships success depends on complete honesty between partners). If we take these findings at face value,
the results suggest that, notwithstanding the importance they attach to
honesty in romantic relationships, many people feel that deceiving their
partners is not merely acceptable under some circumstances, but is in fact
the proper and perhaps from some ethical standpoints the moral thing
to do.
How do we make sense of this apparent inconsistency in beliefs? Turner
et al. (1975) argued that the participants in their study seemed to define
honesty more in terms of fidelity to the maintenance of some on-going

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relationship (p. 82) than in terms of complete disclosure. If our participants

understood the term honesty in the same way, this might go some distance
toward explaining the seemingly contradictory nature of their responses to
the attitude items we asked them to complete. That is, if by rating complete
honesty as being very important in a romantic relationship participants were
indicating to us how important it was to them to preserve the integrity of
their relationships, it is perfectly understandable that they would later
acknowledge the existence of situations in which it might be important to
mislead their partners to avoid placing their relationships with these partners at risk.
It is less clear how this type of explanation could account for the finding
that most participants rejected the assertion that complete honesty is necessary for the success of a romantic relationship. Nevertheless, Turner et al.s
more general point is well taken. We would be wise to use caution in assuming that participants necessarily interpreted the term honesty in the way we
intended. As Turner et al. concluded on the basis of their research, commonsense notions that equate honesty with complete disclosure may not
accurately reflect the way most people define honesty in the context of their
interactions with important others.
Further research is needed to examine more extensively the conditions
under which people think it is appropriate, or even necessary, to mislead a
romantic partner rather than tell him or her the truth. Nevertheless, our
data are important in demonstrating that attitudes towards deceiving a
romantic partner are neither as simple nor as straightforward as philosophy
predicated on always telling the truth might suggest (cf. Bok, 1978; LaFollette & Graham, 1986). Indeed, as McCornack (1997) recently argued,
many acts of deception that occur in relational contexts may derive not from
dishonest motives, but from honest ones. Continued exploration into
peoples beliefs about the moral value of deception and its place in the
fabric of romantic relationships seems warranted.
Predicting deceptive strategy and responses to suspicion
Our final two research questions explored the predictive value of perceptions of success and attitudes toward dishonesty in romantic relationships.
Our results suggest that it may be of considerable value to continue this line
of inquiry and expand the range of self-reported deceptive behaviors that
serve as criterion variables in future investigations.
Both perceptions of success at deceiving and attitudes toward honesty in
romantic relationships demonstrated associations with choice of deceptive
strategy and responses to suspicious communications. For example, both
success and attitudes were related to the use of jokes and sarcasm to deceive
a romantic partner. The less participants believed that they were likely to
succeed in their efforts to deceive their partners and the more strongly they
endorsed the view that complete honesty is important in a romantic
relationship, the less likely they were to report using jokes and sarcasm as
means of deceiving their partners. Attitudes also predicted the use of outright falsification. The more importance participants attached to complete

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honesty between intimates, the less likely they were to report using falsification to deceive their partners.
Success and attitudes further predicted participants reactions to a
partners charges of dishonesty. The more participants believed complete
honesty to be important in a relationship, the more likely they were to claim
that they would confess in response to a partners suspicions of deception.
Confession tended to be an increasingly less likely option, however, as participants confidence in their ability to deceive their partners increased. Perceived success also predicted whether participants reported that they would
respond to a partners accusations by denying that they had been dishonest,
as well as whether they would add to the story. The fewer their doubts that
they would succeed in their venture to mislead their partners, the more
likely participants were to report responding to their partners suspicions by
either adding to the story or denying that they had lied and the less likely
they were to report ignoring the situation. In addition, participants who
believed that it is sometimes better to mislead a partner than to tell the complete truth were less likely than those who believed the contrary to report
that they would continue to lie.
Finally, attitudes toward honesty also predicted participants reactions to
a partners dubious messages. Specifically, participants were somewhat
more likely to report both that they would accuse the partner of lying and
that they would take steps to corroborate their suspicions to the extent that
they believed complete honesty is important in a relationship.
In addition to demonstrating that subjective estimates of success and attitudes toward deception in romantic relationships are worthy predictors to
consider in research on deceptive communication, our findings suggest that
future research might profitably be directed toward investigating variation
in intimates views concerning the relative ease, effectiveness, safety, and
moral value of various strategies for deceiving and responses to suspicious
messages. For example, our results suggest that sarcasm and joking may be
perceived as easier (or perhaps safer) and relatively more moral ways of
deceiving a romantic partner than other strategies that might be used for
this purpose (e.g., falsification or exaggeration). Our findings also suggest
that there may be variation in the extent to which people view certain kinds
of responses to suspicion (e.g., confessing versus continuing to lie) as
socially acceptable.
Of the two criterion variables we examined, perceptions of success (in
particular, participants estimates of the success of their own attempts at
deception) and attitudes toward honesty (especially the importance participants attached to complete honesty in romantic relationships) seemed to
do a better job of predicting responses to suspicion than participants choice
among means of misleading their partners. The success and attitudes variables predicted participants responses to two of the five options in the
checklist intended to assess their reactions to a partners suspicious messages and each of the five categories of responses they offered in the openended question that asked them how they respond when their partners

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suspect them of deception. In contrast, success and attitudes predicted the

use of just two of the five options with which participants were presented in
the checklist intended to assess their use of various strategies for deceiving.
The attitude items also seemed somewhat more closely related to both
mode of deception and responses to suspicion than did perceptions of
success. Our analyses revealed a total of six significant predictive relations
involving attitudes toward honesty (again, most particularly responses to
the item concerning the importance of complete honesty). In contrast, we
identified five such relations (two of which achieved only marginal significance) involving participants subjective estimates of their own success at
deceiving their partners and no such relations involving participants estimates of their partners success at deceiving them.
Any conclusions we might draw about the relative importance of the attitude and success variables on the basis of the present study are, however,
best considered in light of constraints that our measures imposed on participants freedom to respond. In particular, deceptive strategy and
responses to a partners suspicious message were both assessed with 5-item
checklists constructed for purposes of this research. Although we encouraged participants to describe other means of deceiving their partners and
other ways they might react when they suspect a partner of trying to pull
the wool over their eyes, we cannot be certain that their general failure to
take advantage of this opportunity is evidence that our checklists captured
the full range of possible responses. In short, more research is needed
before we would feel safe drawing conclusions about the respective ability
of perceptions of success and attitudes toward dishonesty to predict the variables we examined here. It is also worth noting that, whereas the attitude
measures were entered in the model for each of the analyses we conducted,
the success ratings were not (i.e., we entered own success in the analyses for
deceptive strategy and for responses to a partners suspicions, but partner
success in the analyses for participants suspicions of their partners messages). This analytic strategy may have disadvantaged the success variables
relative to the attitude variables in terms of the number of predictive
relations that could be found.
Future research might examine a number of other criterion variables
beyond choice of deceptive strategy and responses to suspicion. For
example, attitudes toward honesty in romantic relationships ought to
predict the reasons that underlie romantic partners decisions to deceive
each other. Consistent with theorizing mentioned previously (e.g., McCornack, 1997; Turner et al., 1975), if individuals are motivated by the desire
to maintain fidelity to their romantic relationships, we would predict that
they would be apt to chose deception over full and complete disclosure
whenever they believe telling the truth might jeopardize the relationship
(cf. McCornack & Levine, 1990a). Peoples beliefs concerning their own and
their partners abilities to deceive one another ought also to predict how
often people choose to dissemble rather than tell the truth, as well as their
perceptions of the likely consequences associated with discovery.

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