Sexual lying among college students in close and casual relationships

The current investigation examined the extent and nature of sexual lying in close and casual relationships. Participants were 790 undergraduates recruited from 2 institutions for I of 4 studies employing diverse methods-2 experiments, 4 surveys, and a recalled event. Participants tended to tell fewer sexual lies in closer relationships, and those lies tended to be relatively more other-protective than self-protective, Also, the more they engaged in sexual lying, the more sexual lying they believed their partners engaged in. Furthermore, individual sexual lying tendencies were consistent across situations. Finally, participants were generally quite honest with their sex partners, and they lied less about risk-relevant sexual issues than about risk-irrelevant matters, These findings have implications for safer sex interventions.