Young, single and angry men most likely to be liars, says study

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Kelly Rissman

US News Reporter

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Very few of us can claim to never tell a lie, but what if there was a way of spotting a liar without a lie-detector test?

A new study has discovered which of us are actually most likely to be liars, and it’s bad news for young, single men.

The study of 3,349 Americans of “all major ethnic, incomes, and geographic regions” by Curtin University, Australia, sought to discover whether there’s a link between socio-economic status and lying, and it drew some very specific conclusions.

The researchers found that the most likely liars are young, unmarried men prone to road rage and with low levels of education - as well as asking about lying, respondents were asked questions such as “have you ever given someone the finger in traffic?”

Lead study author Arch Woodside explained to the Huffington Post that a young male with low education isn’t enough to determine how prolific a liar he is, “but a young male with low education who engages in antisocial behaviour such as road rage, well by now you can be pretty sure he is.”

However the second most likely group of liars is female - specifically, young, married women with low levels of education who’ve attained a high income. Woodside suggested these could be “women who have married into money.”

Presumably they could also simply be women who have earned their own fortunes despite low levels of education.

And if you want to have an honest conversation with someone, go to an unmarried woman over the age of 70 as they were found to lie the least.

The study categorised “big liars” as those of us who tell 12 significant lies per year, and it found that just 13 per cent of people tell 58 per cent of all lies.

In contrast, 21 per cent of us try to live our lives without lying.

Woodside explained to Broadly that although most of us think we know ourselves well, we really don’t, and “such thinking may be the biggest lie of all."