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Deception In Romantic Relationships

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The relationship that I have been chosen to analyze in relation to the dark side topic, deception, is between two twenty year old, college students. Jessica and Owen have been together for one year starting from the end of their freshmen year of college here at West Virginia University to the present. Jessica is a very private, controlling, prideful woman. Owen, who is also very prideful, is more dependent, open (in relation to self-disclosure), and easy going. Within the one year time span, deception between the two has been a problem. Deception is the mindful, intentional act of communicating information (or intentionally not sharing information) that the sender knows to be false, nonetheless the sender is attempting to create a false impression within the mind of the receiver. There has been debate within the research community of the types of deception, however, for …show more content…

An example of this is when a partner does not tell you about their mother calling because they don’t want you to talk to your family.
The before mentioned study attempted to analyze the role deception plays in romantic relationships, the extent in which deception is used, and the motives behind the deceptive acts. The study used 67 participants (originally 68 but one packet was deemed unusable) from a university. Out of the 67 participants the median age was 20.51; there were 52 females and 15 males; and the average couple had been together for 22.5 months.
The participants were asked to keep a diary for one week and record an entry for every instance they used deception with their romantic partner and to not share their diaries with their partners. The entry should have included the date and time and what type of deception they used (half-truths, exaggerations, lies, secrets, or diversionary responses). Finally, they were asked to describe the act and record their motives for using that particular type of

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