The present study examined relationships between lying motivations and HEXACO (honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, openness) personality traits. Participants (257 adults recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk) completed questionnaires measuring lying frequency, lying motivations, and HEXACO traits. Lying frequency was inversely correlated with honesty-humility and conscientiousness. The most common motivations for lying were for altruistic reasons, for secretive reasons, and to avoid negative evaluation. Comparatively fewer participants reported lying for pleasure (duping delight), to obtain a reward, in carelessness, or for compulsive and protective reasons. HEXACO factors were found to be associated with both self-centered and other-centered motivations for lying. These results demonstrate that individuals lie for various reasons and that personality traits may partially explain differences in lying behavior. Public Significance StatementLying is common. The results of this study suggest that people lie every day for a variety of reasons and that general personality traits, such as honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience, may partially explain individual differences in lying for both self-centered and other-centered reasons.

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