A quote from Clancy Martin in a NYTimes piece on the topic:

“Love is a greater good than the truth. No marriage, no parent’s love of a child should be scrutinized like a pathologist examining his cadaver. Save your ruthless pursuit of the truth for the laboratory; we lovers would rather be like Shakespeare: “Therefore I lie with her and she with me / And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be.” Don’t worry so much about ferreting out the truth. Take care of each other instead.”

And similar quote from a difference source:

“When you take a step back and put it altogether, the picture that emerges about intimate relationships is somewhat contradictory: Because our romantic relationships are so rewarding, yet so constrictive, we are simultaneously more truthful and more deceptive with those we love. Additionally, we place the most trust in the person who is most likely to deceive us, just as we are most likely to deceive the person who loves and trusts us the most. These are just a few of the paradoxes that emerge when taking a close look at the use of deception in our romantic relationships.”

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New research examines how Machiavellians approach sex. Overall the picture is bleak. Machiavellians use sex not as a way to foster intimacy, love and affection. But, they are more likely to use sex as a means for achieving their own personal goals such as revenge, increasing their status, gaining resources, or simply as a physical release, just to name a few.

And it should come as no surprise that Machiavellians are also more likely to engage in sexual lies and are prone to infidelity.

Source: Brewer, G., & Abell, L. (2015). Machiavellianism and sexual behavior: Motivations, deception and infidelity. Personality and Individual Differences, 74, 186-191.

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While women are attracted to men with lower-pitched voices, they also seem to be aware of the risks of picking a long-term partner who is more likely to cheat. As such, women are more likely to be attracted to men with lower-pitched voices when selecting a short-term mate, but have reservations about selecting such men when it comes to settling down. As noted by the authors of the study:

“… women may generally perceive men with relatively masculine traits as sexually attractive, but less suitable as long-term mates.”

Dating is always more complicated then people realize. A host of factors weigh into our decision-making… mostly outside of our conscious awareness.

Source: O’Connor, J. J., Pisanski, K., Tigue, C. C., Fraccaro, P. J., & Feinberg, D. R. (2014). Perceptions of infidelity risk predict women’s preferences for low male voice pitch in short-term over long-term relationship contexts. Personality and Individual differences, 56, 73-77.

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New research shows that eye contact – how we fix our eyes on another person – can reveal our goals and intentions.

When we are in love with someone, most of our eye contact is directed at their face.  When feeling lustful, our eyes focus on the other person’s body.

Key quote from the research:

“In both studies, therefore, the number of fixations to the face, relative to the number of fixations to the body, was greater for decisions involving love than for decisions involving lust. These findings are consistent with the functional-coupling hypothesis, which posits that visual attention reflects, in part, the features of a stimulus that are most relevant to a person’s intentions or goals.”

Eye contact is not useful when trying to determine if someone is lying.  But, it can give us insight into how people feel about us.

Source:

Bolmont, M., Cacioppo, J. T., & Cacioppo, S. (2014). Love Is in the Gaze An Eye-Tracking Study of Love and Sexual Desire. Psychological Science, 0956797614539706.

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Perhaps this is one of the world’s oldest questions, especially considering that prostitution is considered to be the world’s oldest profession.
 
For decades researchers have been exploring if humans, by nature, are meant to be monogamous. No one questions that some individuals can successfully practice monogamy. Just as humans are omnivores by design, some people faithfully lead a vegetarian lifestyle.
 
The real question for scholars is not what people can practice, but

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New research reveals that when it comes to lying, a small percentage of people tell an outsized proportion of lies. The top 5% of liars are responsible for roughly 40% of the lies that are told.1

And the individuals who are more likely to lie are also more likely

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New research reveals that being lied to can increase trust, some of the time.

When someone tells a lie with good intent, trust increases. That is, if someone tells a prosocial lie, we tend to trust him or her more. We make ourselves more open and vulnerable to prosocial liars – this is called “affective trust.”1 We

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When it comes to the use of deception in a romantic relationship, paradoxes abound. The latest research on deception in romantic relationships highlights some of the paradoxes that exist.

To

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