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The influence of lying on the use of self-references: Does self-monitoring have an affect on the relation between lying and self-references?

Kübel, Katharina (2014) The influence of lying on the use of self-references: Does self-monitoring have an affect on the relation between lying and self-references?

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Abstract:Lying is not accepted by society and it raises feelings of shame and guilt. Therefore people tend to create a distance between the false story and themselves. As consequence, they reduce the use of first-person singular pronouns. Since people who score high on self-monitoring (high self-monitoring individuals) usually refer to external information or instructions, they should be less motivated to distance themselves from a lie, if they were told by instructions. In this research it was investigated first if lying has any effect on the use of first-person singular pronouns, also called self-references, and second if self-monitoring influences the usage of self-references. It was therefore expected that people scoring high on self-monitoring use more first-person singular pronouns than those who score low on self-monitoring. 88 participants were asked to write one lied and one true text which were based on a given situation followed by a questionnaire about self-monitoring. The analyses include the research about major effects of lying and self-monitoring on the number of used self-references and their interaction with each other. There are no significant results found in this research which leads to the conclusion that neither lying nor self-monitoring influence the use of self-references and that they do not interact. One possible reason for this is that writing a lie without attendance by a researcher might lead people to read their texts again and revise them, e. g. deleting first-person singular pronouns. For further research, it is suggested to change to an interview that is recorded instead of writing texts.
Item Type:Essay (Bachelor)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:77 psychology
Programme:Psychology BSc (56604)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/64829
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