Maintaining lies: The multiple-audience problem

In an examination of lying in social context, undergraduates were videotaped while describing teachers. Each student described a teacher truthfully to one peer, described the teacher deceptively to a second peer, and was then required to describe the teacher to both peers as the latter sat side-by-side. Three experiments examined the psychology of this multiple-audience predicament. Results of an initial experiment show that students who are in the predicament appear deceptive. They appear deceptive whether they are lying or telling the truth. A second experiment replicates this finding, and suggests that the students’ apparent deceptiveness is conveyed more strongly by audible than visible cues. In the interpersonal predicament created by multiple audiences, students offer equivocal, disfluent remarks, as a third experiment shows. Discussion centers on the challenge of maintaining lies in the context of multiple relationships.