BBC News Staff, (2008). “Men are bigger liars than women, says poll.” BBC News Channel, Visited June 23 2001.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8689010.stm

Summary: The article discusses a survey that was conducted in Britain, pertaining to lies told by men and women. The survey, which was conducted by The Science Museum using 3000 participants, suggests that in general, men tell more lies than women and feel less guilty about it. While the average British man is likely to tell three lies each day, the average British women is likely to tell only two. As a group, it is ‘mothers’ who are most likely to be lied to.

The top lie told by men is ‘I didn’t have that much to drink’, while the top lie told by women is ‘nothing’s wrong, I’m fine’ – which happened to be the second most popular lie among men. So while men tend to lie about drinking habits, it is both genders who seek to hide their true feelings. Both sexes shared a common tenth most popular lie, being, ‘it’s what I’ve always wanted.’ Certainly, this fib is relevant when we consider who gifts are received by each sex.

Women generally feel more guilty about lying, with 82% claiming it eats away at their conscious. Only 70% of men claimed this was also true of themselves. Overall, 84% of people agreed that an ‘acceptable lie’ does exist. This result has much to do with people not wanting to hurt each other’s feelings. The article concludes by quoting Katie Maggs, the associate medical curator at the Science Museum: ‘lying may seem to be an unavoidable part of human nature but it’s an important part of social interaction.’

Personally, I believe that the article is geographically limited as it is only confined to Britain, and the sample size is probably too small to make such grand conjectures.

Conceptual Design: Knowing that the most common lie for men is about their drinking habits, product designers could capitalise on this. For example, if men want to enjoy beer, but need to avoid being drunk, a beer that tastes exactly like full strength, but has little alcohol, might be appealing.

Interaction Design: In order to make it feel like normal, full strength beer, men would have to interact with the beer like they do with their usual beers. It would have to be available from the same pubs, retails outlets, restaurants etc. It should cost the same price (or less).

Interface Design: Again, this type of beer would have to look and feel like regular beer. Therefore, it would have to employ the standard design principles for the bottle and label, and would have to taste exactly like full strength. It is important that there would be little indication about its low strength on the labelling and packaging, as men may feel slightly ashamed by it.

other ideas:

– beer that leaves no scent of alcohol

other considerations:

How can a product support a lie by a man or a woman? Or, the reverse, how can a product work as a lie detector? Or, a Web site that prepares convincing lies for the uncreative types…