Department of Neurophysiology, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, Warsaw, Poland.
PLoS One. 2012;7(8):e43076. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0043076. Epub 2012 Aug 29.
Deception has always been a part of human communication as it helps to promote self-presentation. Although both men and women are equally prone to try to manage their appearance, their strategies, motivation and eagerness may be different. Here, we asked if lying could be influenced by gender on both the behavioral and neural levels. To test whether the hypothesized gender differences in brain activity related to deceptive responses were caused by differential socialization in men and women, we administered the Gender Identity Inventory probing the participants' subjective social sex role. In an fMRI session, participants were instructed either to lie or to tell the truth while answering a questionnaire focusing on general and personal information. Only for personal information, we found differences in neural responses during instructed deception in men and women. The women vs. men direct contrast revealed no significant differences in areas of activation, but men showed higher BOLD signal compared to women in the left middle frontal gyrus (MFG). Moreover, this effect remained unchanged when self-reported psychological gender was controlled for. Thus, our study showed that gender differences in the neural processes engaged during falsifying personal information might be independent from socialization.
欺骗一直是人类交流的一部分，因为它有助于促进自我呈现。尽管男性和女性都同样容易试图管理自己的形象，但他们的策略、动机和渴望可能不同。在这里，我们研究了性别是否会在行为和神经水平上影响说谎。为了测试与欺骗反应相关的大脑活动中假设的性别差异是否是由于男性和女性的差异化社会化造成的，我们使用了性别认同问卷来探测参与者的主观社会性别角色。在 fMRI 会话中，参与者被指示说谎或说实话，同时回答一个重点关注一般和个人信息的问卷。仅针对个人信息，我们发现男性和女性在指令性欺骗期间的神经反应存在差异。女性与男性的直接对比显示，在激活区域没有显著差异，但与女性相比，男性在左额中回（MFG）显示出更高的 BOLD 信号。此外，当控制自我报告的心理性别时，该效应仍然不变。因此，我们的研究表明，在伪造个人信息时参与的神经过程中的性别差异可能与社会化无关。
