Does the Dark Triad Influence the Nature and Frequency of Lying?

The prediction that most people are honest most of the time and most lies are told by a few “prolific liars” has been recently affirmed pan-culturally. Predictors of frequent lying include factors associated with personality. Dark Triad (DT) studies have demonstrated positive associations between DT and deception. However, the skewed distribution of lies may have led to inaccurate conclusions, an issue recently raised. The present study, among (N = 622) Israeli subjects, tested the prediction of frequent lying by high DTs while considering the non-normal distribution of lie frequency. Results demonstrated heteroscedasticity of the lie frequency data. DT scores by the number of lies revealed that being low on DT predicts honesty. The tendency for high DTs is to tell more lies on average, but individually they are as likely to tell few lies as to tell many.