Deception, power, and self-differentiation in college students' romantic relationships: An exploratory study

The relationships among deception, power, and self-differentiation in colle ge students' romantic relationships were explored. As hypothesized, lower t otal deception scores were found to significantly predict higher self-diffe rentiation scores. Both men and women reported that men held significantly more power in their relationships. A secondary analysis revealed that men w ere significantly more likely then women to indicate they would be inclined to use deceptive strategies. Counter to the hypotheses, a significant nega tive correlation was not detected between power scores and omission scores, and positive relationships between power scores and contradiction scores w ere not found.