Men think they're better liars.

“Men are twice as likely as women to consider themselves to be good at lying and at getting away with it, new research has found.

People who excel at lying are good talkers” . . . and lie more often “according to the research led by Dr. Brianna Verigin, at the University of Portsmouth.”

Expert liars prefer face-to-face communication rather than text messaging, phone calls, emails, and social media (where they are least likely to lie).

There seems to be “a significant link between expertise at lying and gender. Men were more than twice as likely to consider themselves expert liars who got away with it.”

"Prolific liars rely on being good with words, weaving their lies into truths, so it becomes hard to distinguish the difference. They’re also better than most at hiding lies within apparently simple, clear stories which are harder for others to doubt."

194 people participated in the study, half men and half women, with an average age of 39. “They were asked a series of questions including how good they were at deceiving others, how many lies they'd told in the past 24 hours, the type of lies they'd told, who to, and whether they'd done so face-to-face or via other means.”

Many “studies have shown we are not as good at detecting lies as we think we are. At best, most of us have a 50:50 chance of getting it right when someone is pulling the wool over our eyes.”

The study found one of the key strategies of liars is to tell plausible lies that stay close to the truth, and to not give away much information. And the better someone thinks they are at lying, the more lies they'll tell.

The most commonly used strategy among all those who admitted to lying, whether experts or poor liars, was to leave out certain information. But expert liars added to that an ability to weave a believable story embellished with truth, making the lies harder to spot.

In contrast, those who thought they weren't good at lying resorted, when they did lie, to being vague.

The most common types of deception, in descending order, were 'white lies', exaggerations, hiding information, burying lies in a torrent of truth and making up things.

Most expert liars lie most often to family, friends or colleagues. Employers and authority figures were least likely to be lied to.

The study showed no link between level of education and lying ability. Dr. Verigin said more research needs to be done, particularly on better understanding good liars' expertise at embedding lies within truthful information, and at using facts that were impossible to check.

The study is reported here.