Factors related to lies within medical context

Lying is a nearly universal phenomenon, yet the characteristics, motivations, and reasoning behind deception are quite intricate. For instance, psychological factors such as shame, guilt, embarrassment, and social anxiety all influence one’s likelihood to lie. Additionally, deception is a social occurrence, and it appears in many settings, such as medical environments. While multiple studies have investigated concepts around lying, few have specifically approached deception within medical care contexts. This includes topics such as doctor-patient relationships, medical care-providing relationships, medical questionnaires, and more. I hypothesize that factors such as social anxiety, embarrassment, shame, and guilt will positively correlate with deceptive reporting in medical contexts while self-esteem will negatively correlate with deceptive reporting. Measures of social anxiety, embarrassment, shame, guilt, self-esteem, and dishonesty in medical contexts were distributed through an online survey. Results indicated significant correlations between psychological factors and lying in clinical settings even when controlling for a person’s general tendency to lie.