New psychology research reveals three distinct types of liars in romantic relationships
Hi everyone — I'm the lead author of a study that was covered by PsyPost today, and I thought this community might find it interesting.
We surveyed 567 adults in romantic relationships about why they deceive their partners — measuring seven different motives, from avoiding conflict and sparing a partner's feelings to malicious intent. We also measured attachment insecurity, dark personality traits, relationship satisfaction, and each person's overall tendency to deceive.
Instead of asking only why do people lie, we asked a slightly different question: are there distinct types of deceivers based on their motivational patterns.
Using latent profile analysis, we found three groups:
Transparent Partners (38.1%) — reported uniformly low endorsement of every motive for deception and the lowest tendency to deceive. They also reported the highest relationship satisfaction and were the most securely attached group.
Strategic Soothers (47.6% — the largest group) — deceive mainly for self-protective and relationship-maintenance reasons: avoiding conflict, sparing a partner's feelings, covering mistakes, and protecting privacy. They scored low on malicious motives. Their satisfaction fell in between the other two groups — significantly lower than Transparent Partners, but significantly higher than Antagonistic Strategists.
Antagonistic Strategists (14.3% — the smallest group, but the most concerning) — endorsed every motive for deception at elevated levels, including malicious intent, attention seeking, and sexual avoidance. They reported the highest tendency to deceive, the lowest relationship satisfaction, and elevated dark personality traits (narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism).
The main takeaway is not "lying is fine." It's that the meaning of deception can't be inferred from frequency alone — the motives behind it matter. And here's the part I find most interesting: insecurity alone didn't determine who became an exploitative deceiver. Strategic Soothers and Antagonistic Strategists reported nearly identical levels of attachment insecurity — what separated them was dark personality traits. Insecure people low in those traits tended to deceive to keep the peace; the same insecurity paired with narcissism, psychopathy, or sadism showed up as deception aimed at control and self-interest.
The full study was published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, and PsyPost wrote a summary here:
Happy to answer questions — and I'm curious what this community thinks...