Article

Why are lies small?

2025-11-07

Abstract excerpt

<p>Deception is common, yet lies are typically small and not easily spotted. The dominant explanations for why this is the case are psychological in nature, such that small lies are thought to allow individuals to maintain their self-concept or that individuals have a general preference for truth-telling. In this paper, we suggest that lies are typically small because small lies allow individuals to retrieve benef...

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Identifiers and source

Literature Corpus work: 074e0828-c43f-5bbf-812f-a400d76533b5
DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/9e73u_v1

Open publication

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