Men are twice as likely as women to consider themselves to be good at lying and at getting away with it, new research has found.

People who excel at lying are good talkers and tell more lies than others, usually to family, friends, romantic partners and colleagues, according to the research led by Dr Brianna Verigin, at the University of Portsmouth.

Expert liars also prefer to lie face-to-face, rather than via text messages, and social media was the least likely place where they’d tell a lie.

Dr Verigin, who splits her time between the Universities of Portsmouth and Maastricht, in the Netherlands, said: “We found a significant link between expertise at lying and gender. Men were more than twice as likely to consider themselves expert liars who got away with it.

“Previous research has shown that most people tell one-two lies per day, but that’s not accurate, most people don’t lie everyday but a small number of prolific liars are responsible for the majority of lies reported.

“What stood out in our study was that nearly half (40 per cent) of all lies are told by a very small number of deceivers. And these people will lie with impunity to those closest to them.

“Prolific liars rely on a great deal on being good with words, weaving their lies into truths, so it becomes hard for others to distinguish the difference, and they’re also better than most at hiding lies within apparently simple, clear stories which are harder for others to doubt.”

Dr Verigin quizzed 194 people, half men and half women, with an average age of 39.

They were asked a series of questions including how good they were at deceiving others, how many lies they’d told in the past 24 hours, the type of lies they’d told, who to, and whether they’d done so face-to-face or via other means.