Exploring Lie Frequency and Emotional Experiences of Deceptive Decision Making in Autistic Adults

Blackhurst, Tiegan and Warmelink, Lara and Roestorf, Amanda and Hartley, Calum (2025) Exploring Lie Frequency and Emotional Experiences of Deceptive Decision Making in Autistic Adults. Autism. ISSN 1362-3613 (In Press)

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Abstract

Deception is a multi-faceted social behaviour that is pervasive in human communication. Due to differences in social communication and experiences, autistic and non-autistic adults may contrast in how they respond to situations that elicit deceptive decision-making. This study examined whether autistic and non-autistic adults differed in their general lie frequency, their inclination to produce different lie types, and their emotional experiences of lying. Fifty-eight non-autistic and fifty-six autistic university students matched on age and gender completed self-report measures of their general lying patterns, how often they lied in the past 24 hours, and whether they would lie across hypothetical scenarios with differing beneficiaries (self, other, group) and motivations (protective, beneficial). The groups did not significantly differ in their general lying behaviour or frequency of lies told over 24 hours. Yet, autistic adults indicated that they would be significantly less likely to lie in group scenarios and would experience increased difficulty, more guilt, and greater concerns about their believability when lying. These results advance theoretical understanding by suggesting that autistic adults’ deceptive decision making may be context dependent. Future research may benefit from examining autistic deception across numerous social situations as more general lie frequency measures may be insensitive to nuanced population differences.