A new poll suggests that women are twice as likely to lie as men – if respondents were telling the truth, that is. It may be irritating to be told, yet again, that women are more morally slippery than men (just as in Genesis) but one could also argue that women lie more because we are “nicer”.

The survey, funded by an insurance company, found that an overwhelming majority of lies were told in order to make someone feel better, to avoid trouble, or to make life simpler (and very rarely for false insurance claims). This was true of both men’s and women’s lies, the only clear difference being that women did it more often – some, apparently, up to 30 times a day.

So what is it that makes women so delightful, if untrustworthy? It seems that whichever side of the born/made debate you favour, you will find plenty of evidence to support the idea that women are inclined to be kind.

In the “nature” camp we have the notion that women are biologically programmed to care for helpless babies. This means that we not only have soft, cuddly, fat-retaining bodies, but that our brains are constructed in such a way as to make us communicative and understanding.

In the “nurture” camp we might hear that women have been coerced into being caring and accommodating as part of a long-term brainwashing campaign.

This began in Palaeolithic times, when the birth of agriculture meant that it was materially advantageous for females to stay at home weeding and breastfeeding while males went out to hunt. Being forced to loiter about in the village inevitably made women friendly, if a little gossipy – but it also meant that the men got all the excitement and glory. No wonder we succumbed to telling a few porkies to liven things up.

So, are our soothing lies genetically underpinned or culturally dictated? New developments in neuroscience throw light on marked differences between masculine and feminine brains. But, in case the notion that “men and women think differently, naturally” threatens to make things too simple, we also have to factor in a nurture element in the form of genetic switches – genes that are activated (or not) by environmental factors.

Our experiences affect our genes, making even supposedly hardwired qualities such as gender more fluid than we might previously have imagined.

Men can be incredibly emotionally responsive, and can tell just as good whoppers as women. Neuroplasticity is such that different brains can be developed in markedly different directions, producing great female mathematicians and male emoters alike.

But if gender is so blurry, how come women claim to lie so much more? Especially 46-year-olds in Plymouth, Cardiff and Brighton, who apparently are the most duplicitous.

One of the often-noted distinctions between male and female brains concerns our use of language. Men apparently processes language largely on the left side, while women tend to deal with language across the two hemispheres. This may explain why girls generally outperform boys at the level of language development — because they have access to more complex, emotional, intuitive means of processing verbal information.

The result of this may be that it’s often easier for females not only to read the effects of speech on others, but also to tailor their own speech to bring about the best possible reaction: in other words, to tell people what they want to hear.

While this might be considered a bit weak and sappy, it also shows a high level of empathy and verbal dexterity. White lies show human socialisation at its most crafty and sophisticated. And women are not only socialised to produce them, but also have the brain architecture to make us particularly good at it.

None of which is to say that women are better than men, or worse than men, or even fundamentally all that different. Not only can nurture affect us at the genetic level, potentially making us more biologically inclined to be emotionally responsive, but also, it seems, all of us have the capacity to be socialised this way or that, to identify with one sex or another, and for our bodies to respond accordingly.

Perhaps we will know gender equality has finally arrived when men become so “nice” that we can no longer trust a word they say to us. I, for one, can hardly wait.