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Male Detection of Deception

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Men and women have differing parental investment needs with respect to relationships (Trivers 1972) and place emphasis on different characteristics when evaluating potential partners. So, not surprisingly, when it comes to mating, both sexes engage in a type of contest, so to speak, where deception occurs on the part of both sexes (Grammer et al. 2000) and both sexes expect the opposite sex to deceive and lie in order to gain a mate (Keenan et al. 1997; Benz et al. 2005). But, both men and women report being upset when they are deceived and lied to (Haselton et al. 2005), and men assume women are being deceiving the majority of the time (Goetz and Causey 2009).

The deception that occurs often centers around characteristics that are preferred by the opposite sex in order to facilitate one’s outcome in intersexual competition (Benz et al. 2005; Keenan et al. 1997). The opposite sex’s ability to detect deception on the part of a partner would also help them compete intersexually. But,...

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Correspondence to T. Joel Wade .

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Joel Wade, T., Salerno, K., Moran, J. (2018). Male Detection of Deception. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2016-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2016-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

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