Normies do not experience "duping delight," the triumph of successful lying, but individuals with dark personality traits seem to enjoy it

In Search of Duping Delight. Christopher A. Gunderson et al. Affective Science (2022) 3:519–527. July 19 2022. https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s42761-022-00126-5?sharing_token=UDARajZZMOajsQOWajroRPe4RwlQNchNByi7wbcMAY4DvTiS0pewgUgjHUGHF-j8tun13uPLn0O4pzl2ZLfzKIaL7mGS7mgTPcoOOvxPoS0cEJiQ_KVmG43HkaTQYNUo9ipPDnldxhCSzE8HYHFl9lbBaLFNHzToXmNnToT9Jgg%3D

Abstract: Deception has long been assumed to conjure diverse affective experiences (Trovillo, 1938). Liars, more than truth-tellers, are theorized to feel guilt, fear, and nervousness (e.g., Ekman, 1985; Zuckerman et al., 1981). Additionally, deception has been proposed to elicit positive affect. Ekman (1985) broadly defined duping delight as any positive affective experience that occurs in anticipation of, during, or following a lie. Empirical evidence for this definition of duping delight has primarily come from studies of affective cues during deceptive acts. For example, in a study of emotional, high-stakes lies in which people pleaded for help to find a person they had recently murdered, smiles were described by ten Brinke and Porter (2012) as a sign of duping delight. However, research suggests that smiles may occur for multiple reasons (e.g., to signal affiliation or dominance; Martin et al., 2017). Given the difficulty in inferring affective states from facial expressions (Barrett et al., 2019), a more direct approach would ask liars and truth-tellers to report on their affect.

Discussion

In the two studies, we sought experimental evidence that successful deception would result in duping delight. Across both studies, receiving affirming feedback about one’s believability increased positive affect. Believability feedback, however, did not interact with veracity to predict positive affect: Successful (vs. unsuccessful) liars did not report greater positive affect. However, we did find that liars who reported moderate and high (but not low) Machiavellianism and narcissism reported more positive affect after receiving affirming feedback, suggesting that personality variables may be an important predictor of who experiences duping delight. Although these findings suggest that duping delight may be a less common response to successful deception than previously theorized, it should be noted that Ekman and Frank (1993) proposed additional conditions for producing duping delight that were not part of our paradigm. While our paradigm involved a lie that caused no harm to others (Ruedy et al., 2013), the present study lacked an audience to witness the lie and a “victim” who has a reputation of being hard to trick (Ekman & Frank, 1993). That said, we did directly test one potential moderator of the experience of duping delight in Study 2, specifically whether the lie was goal conducive. We attempted to manipulate goal congruence by including an incentive condition, which provided a tangible reward for successful lying (or truth-telling). However, we found no effect of incentive. Although these findings may suggest that our incentive was not large enough to impact affective experiences, these results are consistent with previous research on conceptually similar cheating behavior: positive affect is elicited whether cheating is self-selected or sanctioned by experimental manipulation and was unrelated to the size of financial incentive gained by cheating (Ruedy et al., 2013). Alternatively, it is possible that duping delight is only experienced by a subset of the population. For example, individuals with high levels of “dark” personality traits have been observed to lie more and report duping delight as a motivator for their deception (Jonason et al., 2014; Spidel et al., 2011). Indeed, duping delight might serve as positive reinforcement for these individuals, resulting in their prolific use of deception. The results in Study 2 indicate that Machiavellianism and narcissism moderated the effect of positive affect after receiving believable (vs. not believable) feedback after lying. This is consistent with previous work suggesting that “dark” personality traits are positively associated with lying and unethical behavior across various situations (Azizli et al., 2016; Baughman et al., 2014; Elaad et al., 2020) and positive attitudes about deceptive communication (Oliveira & Levine, 2008). Future research should continue to explore the effects of personality and situational variables (e.g., Markowitz & Levine, 2021) with consideration for a typology of lies (Cantarero et al., 2018) that may elicit different affective experiences while lying. To date, much of the research on duping delight in the deception literature has been focused on how this affective experience might give rise to behavioral cues to deception (e.g., Ekman, 1985; ten Brinke & Porter, 2012). The current research advances theorizing about duping delight by testing some of the proposed moderators of this experience and considering how this affective experience may reinforce and exacerbate the use of deception in social life. Additional research on duping delight will allow for a richer understanding of how and why people choose to lie, and whether this affective experience acts as an affective “reward” that affects deception frequency over time.