Hartwig's self-report deception studies (2011) found that people tell lies ______.

• A. once in a blue moon
• B. on occasion
• C. very rarely
• D. fairly often

Answer: (D)

The main idea here is how often people say they lie in everyday life. Hartwig and colleagues used self-report methods to measure deception frequency and found that lying occurs with noticeable regularity in daily interactions. They showed that lies aren’t just rare, one-off events or things people only do under special circumstances; they’re reported as something that happens fairly often across ordinary conversations and situations. This makes “fairly often” the best fit because it captures a middle ground between never or rarely lying and lying constantly. Keep in mind that self-reports can be influenced by memory and social desirability, but the overall pattern in their studies is that lying is a common part of everyday communication.