ArticleJournal of adolescence2025
Pants on fire: Risks for and outcomes of atypical lying.
Article in Journal of adolescence, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Pathways to honesty: Exploring the ecological desistance of atypical lying features.Journal of research on adolescence : the official journal of the Society for Research on Adolescence · 2026Article
- Pants on fire: Risks for and outcomes of atypical lying.Journal of adolescence · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionMost people are generally honest, but around 5% of individuals are prolific liars, some of whom lie for fun or no reason. However, developmental research on atypical lying features (e.g., motives, attitudes, inclinations for dishonesty) and the associated traits and negative outcomes is lacking. We examined how psychopathic traits are related to the development of lying trajectories and whether exhibiting atypical lying features during a developmental period when lies tend to decrease in frequency (i.e., adolescence to adulthood) increases the risk for adulthood antisocial behaviors.
methodsData come from the multisite Pathways to Desistance project, a longitudinal study of serious juvenile offenders in the United States who were interviewed across 11 time points over 7 years from 2000 to 2010. Age-based trajectory analyses modeled self-reported atypical lying features from ages 14 to 26 for male participants (N = 1170; 42.1% Black, 34.0% Hispanic, 19.2% White, 4.6% Other), and examined how subscales from the Youth Psychopathy Inventory predicted lying trajectory classes and whether those classes differed in adulthood offending and substance use.
resultsAround 5% of the sample maintained elevated atypical lying features in adolescence and into adulthood. These individuals were more manipulative, remorseless, impulsive, and irresponsible in adolescence, and were more likely to offend and use substances in adulthood.
conclusionsFindings highlight how atypical lying features during the normative developmental desistance period of lying may be elevated for prolific liars and how traits can be used to identify at-risk individuals. This information will help to inform intervention and prevention programs targeting externalizing behaviors.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.