Machiavellianism and deception.

Abstract

Subjects who held a Machiavellian view of life, as measured by Christie's Mach Scales, were more convincing liars than non-Machiavellians. Sixty-four college students (high and low Mach men and women) were videotaped denying knowledge of a theft. Half had just been directly implicated in the theft; the other half made the same denial truthfully. A different group of 64 high and low Mach men and women college students viewed the 1.25-minute videotape clips in random sequence and judged the denials for veracity. The judgments were analyzed in an eight-factor, equal-n analysis of variance. The judges discriminated truth from lies accurately overall. As predicted, lying high Machs were more believed than lying low Machs. Also as predicted, high Machs were harder to judge. Lying high Machs were believed as much as truthful high Machs, but lying low Machs were less believed than truthful lows. People who hold a Machiavellian view of life are expected to be smooth liars. In ordinary parlance Machiavellianism is synonymous with the use of guile and deceit. Although Machiavelli did not advocate lying as a preferred policy, he assumed its necessity in an imperfect world. In fact he emphasized maintaining a public appearance of virtue while practicing whatever means were required to achieve one's ends. When the truth is unlikely to serve one's purpose, a lie is presented instead. Since Christie's (1970) development of the Mach Scale, a face-valid measure of agreement with Machiavelli, a number of studies have demonstrated that high scorers were more willing and able con artists than low scorers (Christie & Geis, 1970). But in contrast with the positive results for general manipulative skills, empirical demonstration of high Machs' hypothesized lying ability has been lacking. The first study using the Mach Scales in which objectively identifiable lying (by subjects) was observed was that of Exline, Thibaut, Hickey, and Gumpert (1970). After cheating with a partner when the experimenter was called out of the room, subjects were interrogated by the experimenter. Listening to audio tapes judges rated high Requests for reprints should be sent to Florence L. Geis, Department of Psychology, 220 Wolf Hall, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19711.

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