Online dating through lies: the effects of lie fabrication for personal semanticinformation on predicted and actual memory performance

Abstract

Research shows that people lie on online dating sites often but might fail to remember this information subsequently. This study investigated participants’ predicted and actual memory performance for personal semantic information after telling the truth versus a lie in two experiments in a setup similar to online dating sites. In Experiment 1, participants responded to open-ended questions either truthfully or fabricated lies in a within-subjects design, followed by predictions for remembering their responses. Subsequently, they recalled their responses through free-recall. Using the same design, Experiment 2 also manipulated the type of retrieval task by using a free- or cued-recall test. The results showed that participants consistently had higher memory predictions for truthful than deceptive responses. However, the actual memory performance did not always produce similar results to their predictions. The results suggest that the difficulties during lie fabrication, measured through response latencies, partially mediated the relationship between lying and memory predictions. The study has important applied implications for lying about personal semantic information in online dating contexts.