Why Men Lie Up and Women Lie Down

Interesting view on why and how men and women lie. What do you think?

Both men and women lie, but they lie about different (and predictable) things.

Whether in personal ads or in face-to-face conversations, men tend to lie about their earnings and their height.  In contrast, women tend to lie about their age and their weight.  And both men and women often lie about the number of sexual partners they have had in their lives.

On all of these dimensions, men typically lie upwards and women typically lie downwards.  Men pretend that they make more money than they actually do, they pretend that they are taller than they actually are, and they pretend that they have had more sexual partners than they actually have.  In contrast, women pretend that they are younger than they actually are, they pretend that they are lighter than they actually are, and they pretend that they have had fewer sexual partners than they actually have.

Of all these dimensions, height is the only one that stays more or less the same throughout adult life.  All the other dimensions only increase with time.  Age by definition increases uniformly and equally with time.  Most people’s earnings increase with age and experience.  Because metabolism slows down with age, most people become heavier as they get older.  And the lifetime number of sexual partners cannot decrease and usually increases with time.

In other words, women lie and pretend to be what they used to be before in the past, whereas men lie and pretend to be what they will be in the future (or what they hope to become in an alternate universe or in their fantasy).