I forget where I read this, but in the nineteenth century, Europeans who did business with Americans came to the conclusion that Americans like to play a very rough game of conversational poker underneath an apparently straightforward, frank and honest manner. In business dealings, the Europeans, who thought themselves to be smart businessmen, found themselves getting consistently out-negotiated by Americans. They quickly learned to read the tough game-mind beneath the friendly exterior.

I think the same holds true today. It is very easy to underestimate Americans because you don't realize they treat conversations like poker games by instinct.

So using those observations, and applying the principle that people expect others to behave as they do, I think Americans are most comfortable with, and expect, poker-like conversations. This includes accepting lying as legitimate if it can be viewed as a fair sort of poker bluff.

What Americans don't like, expect, or know how to deal with are the adjacent behaviors:

1. Lying that's not motivated by poker-bluffing type instincts, but by something like cowardice, status preservation or polite harmony-seeking (as in the Japanese tendency to communicate various degrees of "No" with various kinds of "Yes.")
2. Actual honesty of the sort you often get with the French
3. Poker-like behaviors that are not covered with a straightforward, frank and honest manner (i.e., visibly devious, Machievellian affect)

An important consequence of these expectations is that Americans really don't expect others to take offense at things very often. Americans themselves are slow to take offense partly because they have such relaxed views of legitimate conversational movies, and partly because of the handshake-trust history where guns came out blazing if your honor was doubted.

Some of this has changed since the 19th century though, especially among the political far-left types of Americans.