The lie scale of the Maudsley personality inventory

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Summary 1. The Maudsley Personality Inventory, in a form containing 20 items designed to test “lying”, was administered to an experimental population of 99 Ss. 2. An item analysis of the Lie items was carried out and an 18 item Lie Scale with an average item/scale r of .59, and split 1/2 r of 66, was isolated. 3. It was found that “Lying” (L) had no significant correlation with Extraversion (E), but a negative and non-linear correlation with Neuroticism (N). 4. The distribution of L scores had a marked positive skew. 5. Between scale correlations were calculated for two cross-validation groups (a) 244 Maryland Students (b) 100 British apprentices. 6. For the two cross-validation groups, the shapes of the L score distributions were the same as for the experimental population. The relations between the scales were also found to be closely similar to those obtaining with the experimental population, except that the negative correlation between L and N was linear for group (b). 7. The implications of these findings are discussed.