SELF-PRESENTATIONS OF ATTITUDES FOLLOWING COMMITMENT TO PROATTITUDINAL BEHAVIOR

Attitude statements present a particular image of the respondent to onlookers and can be tactically used for self-presentational purposes. The present study investigated the relationship between variables relevant to self-presentation and attitude statements following proattitudinal actions. Under conditions of high or low decision freedom, female subjects committed themselves to argue for a proattitudinal issue. The experimenter described the issue as either low or high in importance, and subsequent attitudes toward the issue were measured in a way which allowed low (subjects did not sign their questionnaires and placed them in a collection box) or high (subjects signed their questionnaires and handed them to the experimenter) personal association with attitude statements. A triple interaction of the variables was found on subjects'statements of personal involvement with the issue. As suggested by a self-presentation approach, subjects expressed more involvement under no-choice/low-association/high-importance conditions than under choice/low-association/high-importance conditions. Subjects who were denied personal responsibility and close association with an important action apparently increased their involvement to gain responsibility. The findings failed to support self-perception predictions of more favorable attitudes under choice rather than no-choice conditions.     

It’s not just what you say but when you say it: Self-presentation and temporal construal

Three experiments demonstrated that the use and effectiveness of self-presentation strategies are affected by time. In Experiment 1, participants used more indirect self-presentation statements for the distant than near future, but used more direct self-presentation statements for the near than distant future. In Experiment 2, participants for whom indirect self-presentation strategies were made accessible rated a future interview as more temporally distant than those for whom direct self-presentation strategies were made accessible. In Experiment 3, participants rated their self-presentation attempts as more effective if they used direct strategies for the near future and indirect strategies for the distant future. Implications for studying the timing of self-presentation and its relation to temporal construal levels are discussed.     

A model statement does not enhance the verifiability approach

The present experiment investigated to what extent providing participants with a model statement influences the ability of the verifiability approach to detect deception. Participants gave a true and false statement about a negative autobiographical event, with half of the participants receiving a detailed model statement just before giving their statement. We expected false statements to include more nonverifiable and less verifiable details than true statements and that providing a model statement would increase these differences. False statements indeed included more nonverifiable details than truthful statements but did not differ in the number of verifiable details. True statements included a higher ratio of verifiable details. The model statement encouraged participants to give a longer and more detailed statement. However, it prompted participants to increase the number of included verifiable—and not nonverifiable—details, regardless of veracity. Using a model statement did not influence the discriminability of the verifiability approach.     

Children's and adults' conceptualization and evaluation of lying and truth‐telling

The present study examined children's and adults' categorization and moral judgment of truthful and untruthful statements. 7‐, 9‐ and 11‐year‐old Chinese children and college students read stories in which story characters made truthful or untruthful statements and were asked to classify and evaluate the statements. The statements varied in terms of whether the speaker intended to help or harm a listener and whether the statement was made in a setting that called for informational accuracy or politeness. Results showed that the communicative intent and setting factors jointly influence children's categorization of lying and truth‐telling, which extends an earlier finding (Lee & Ross, 1997) to childhood. Also, we found that children's and adults' moral judgments of lying and truth‐telling were influenced by the communicative intent but not the setting factor. The present results were discussed in terms of Sweetser's (1987) folkloristic model of lying. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Deceiving suspects about their alibi is equally harmful to the innocent and guilty

A common belief in police officers is that guilty suspects' statements are less consistent than innocent suspects'. This could leave guilty suspects more vulnerable to missing inconsistencies externally induced into their alibis. Source monitoring and cognitive load approaches suggest that untruthfulness rather than guilt should predict proneness to such deception. Manipulating both guilt and truthfulness, we tested these opposing hypotheses. One hundred twenty‐six participants were accused of stealing gift vouchers after wandering about a building. When interviewed several days later, participants rarely detected alterations in their alibi (23–29%). Unexpectedly, for one of three detection measures, untruthful participants detected more manipulations than did truthful participants. Guilt did not moderate detection rates. Manipulations were equally harmful for guilty and innocent suspects, and blindness to the alibi manipulations was not useful for discriminating innocent from guilty suspects. Because blindness effects are easy to elicit in the legal context, techniques that externally induce inconsistencies should be avoided.     

Using an Example Statement Increases Information but Does Not Increase Accuracy of CBCA,RM, and SCAN

Verbal credibility assessment methods are frequently used in the criminal justice system to investigate the truthfulness of statements. Three of these methods are Criteria Based Content Analysis (CBCA), Reality Monitoring (RM), and Scientific Content Analysis (SCAN). The aim of this study is twofold. First, we investigated the diagnostic accuracy of CBCA, RM, and especially SCAN. Second, we tested whether giving the interviewee an example of a detailed statement can enhance the diagnostic accuracy of these verbal credibility methods. To test the latter, two groups of participants were requested to write down one true and one fabricated statement about a negative event. Prior to this request, one group received a detailed example statement, whereas the other group received no additional information. Results showed that CBCA and RM scores differed between true and fabricated statements, whereas SCAN scores did not. Giving a detailed example statement did not lead to better discrimination between truth tellers and liars for any of the methods but did lead to the participants producing significantly longer statements. The implications of these findings are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evolving informational credentials: the (mis)attribution of believable facts to credible sources

Three studies demonstrate that individuals often rely on a "belief force equals credible source" heuristic to make source judgments, wherein they assume that statements they believe originate from credible sources. In Study 1, participants who were exposed to a statement many times (and hence believed it) were more likely to attribute it to Consumer Reports than to the National Enquirer. In Study 2, participants read a murder investigation article containing evidence against two suspects from credible and noncredible sources. When participants believed a particular suspect to be guilty, they misattributed evidence incriminating that suspect to the high-credibility source. Study 3 demonstrated that this phenomenon occurs because individuals assume their beliefs are true and that true beliefs come from credible sources; when participants were given feedback that their beliefs were incorrect, the relationship between beliefs and source inferences did not occur.     

Prototypes of Faith: Findings with the Faith Q‐Sort

Defining religion and finding ways to assess it in individual lives has long challenged psychologists of religion. At first, open‐ended questionnaires were used, but with the advent of modern statistical methods, a succession of religiosity scales was developed. But these usually brief scales were typically based on the preconceptions of their authors, who were overwhelmingly Protestant Christian and often conservative, much as were those who completed them. To provide a more adequate way of assessing “faith,” a term here encompassing both religious and nonreligious attitudes, a new assessment device was developed that incorporates the singular advantages of Q methodology. The Faith Q‐Sort consists of 101 statements that respondents sort on a nine‐category continuum, indicating the degree to which each statement describes himself or herself. Factor analysis based on correlations of the sorts rather than individual items yielded, for the initial group of participants, three major prototypes and five minor ones, accounting for 67 percent of the variance. Of the 42 participants, 31 proved to be exemplars of one or another of the eight prototypes. Subsequent explorations illustrate the wealth of possibilities the FQS offers, both as a research instrument and a counseling tool.     

Witnesses' failure to detect covert manipulations in their written statements

Law enforcement agencies and legal professionals often have to rely on witness statements. Undetected errors in witnesses' statements, however, could impede the accurate reconstruction of a crime and lead to the incrimination of innocent suspects. Here, we examined whether witnesses can detect manipulations in their written statements. We expect that writing a statement could provide a good means for discrimination between what is truly recalled and what is an error. This is because writing allows to monitor and control the previously produced information. In 3 experiments, participants watched a mock crime film and subsequently provided a written statement of what they had witnessed. Following a delay of several minutes (Experiment 1), 48 hr (Experiment 2), or 1 month (Experiment 3), participants were exposed to and interviewed about their testimony. Unknown to them, they were confronted with statements, which included 4 secretly manipulated details. Participants' missed a substantial number of manipulations in their written statements. Importantly, the detection rates varied as a function of delay (Experiments 1 and 2: 74–89%; Experiment 3: 36%–52%). Detection rates also varied as a function of the type of details that were manipulated. Our findings indicate that writing a statement comes with limited benefits in witnesses' ability to detect errors in their statements.     

Separating fact from fiction: an examination of deceptive self-presentation in online dating profiles

This study examines self-presentation in online dating profiles using a novel cross-validation technique for establishing accuracy. Eighty online daters rated the accuracy of their online self-presentation. Information about participants' physical attributes was then collected (height, weight, and age) and compared with their online profile, revealing that deviations tended to be ubiquitous but small in magnitude. Men lied more about their height, and women lied more about their weight, with participants farther from the mean lying more. Participants' self-ratings of accuracy were significantly correlated with observed accuracy, suggesting that inaccuracies were intentional rather than self-deceptive. Overall, participants reported being the least accurate about their photographs and the most accurate about their relationship information. Deception patterns suggest that participants strategically balanced the deceptive opportunities presented by online self-presentation (e.g., the editability of profiles) with the social constraints of establishing romantic relationships (e.g., the anticipation of future interaction).     

社会困境中同伴行为、合作信念对合作变化的影响

本研究采用连续式公共物品困境,考察不同类型的个体在同伴遵守和违反均等规范两种条件下合作的前后变化及其可能的机制。结果发现：（1）依据行为决策对被试进行的分类与其社会价值取向之间不存在相关;（2）一人违反均等条件下被试的合作水平高于多人违反均等条件下的合作水平;（3）高贡献者在前后两次互动中维持较高的合作水平和信念水平;（4）低贡献者第二次决策时比第一次决策时更合作,这可能是由于他们的合作信念提高。     

Why do people self-harm?

The accuracy of perceptions about self-harm that are presented in the psychological and psychiatric literature was assessed with a sample of self-harmers. A list of 20 statements containing ten myths and ten accurate statements about self-harm behaviour was incorporated into an internet-based questionnaire. Respondents (n?=?243) rated their extent of agreement with each statement. Factor analysis confirmed the a priori classification of statements as being accurate. Only one item, regarding the relationship of self-harm to previous sexual abuse, did not confirm a priori classification; this statement was considered by self-harmers to be an accurate perception of self-harm. It was concluded that this questionnaire could be a useful aid for group-work training with professionals who are involved in working with people who engage in self-harm.     

Misunderstanding the affective consequences of everyday social interactions: the hidden benefits of putting one's best face forward

Positive self-presentation may have beneficial consequences for mood that are typically overlooked. Across a series of studies, participants underestimated how good they would feel in situations that required them to put their best face forward. In Studies 1 and 2A, participants underestimated the emotional benefits of interacting with an opposite sex stranger versus the benefits of interacting with a romantic partner. In Study 2B, participants who were instructed to engage in self-presentation felt happier after interacting with their romantic partner than participants who were not given this instruction, although other participants serving as forecasters did not anticipate such benefits. Increasing the generalizability of this self-presentation effect across contexts, the authors demonstrated that participants also underestimated how good they would feel before and after being evaluated by another person (Studies 3 and 4). This failure to recognize the affective benefits of putting one's best face forward may underlie forecasting errors regarding the emotional consequences of the most common forms of social interactions.     

Automated verbal credibility assessment of intentions: The model statement technique and predictive modeling

Recently, verbal credibility assessment has been extended to the detection of deceptive intentions, the use of a model statement, and predictive modeling. The current investigation combines these 3 elements to detect deceptive intentions on a large scale. Participants read a model statement and wrote a truthful or deceptive statement about their planned weekend activities (Experiment 1). With the use of linguistic features for machine learning, more than 80% of the participants were classified correctly. Exploratory analyses suggested that liars included more person and location references than truth‐tellers. Experiment 2 examined whether these findings replicated on independent‐sample data. The classification accuracies remained well above chance level but dropped to 63%. Experiment 2 corroborated the finding that liars' statements are richer in location and person references than truth‐tellers' statements. Together, these findings suggest that liars may over‐prepare their statements. Predictive modeling shows promise as an automated veracity assessment approach but needs validation on independent data.     

The Effects of Opening Statements on Mock Jurors' Verdicts in a Simulated Criminal Trial1

Twenty-nine male and 37 female adults served as mock jurors in a simulated criminal trial in which the amount of preview offered in both the prosecution's and defense's opening statements was factorially varied. It was found that the effects upon verdicts of guilt of the amount of preview in either side's opening statement depended on that in the other side's opening statement. Extensive prosecution opening statements led to more guilty verdicts only when the de fense's opening statement was also extensive; when the defense's opening statement was brief, participants tended to find the defendant guilty regardless of the amount of preview in the prosecution's opening statement. Extensive opening statements from the defense led to more not-guilty verdicts only when the prosecution's opening statement was brief. Results from a series of mid-trial measures indicated that opening statements predisposed jurors to favor one side or the other very early in the trial, and that jurors tended to maintain this predisposition throughout the course of the trial. It was suggested that opening statements serve to create thematic frameworks which the jurors use to assist them in their processing of trial information. Implications for legal practice were also discussed.     

交往情景下个体对说谎的理解及其道德评价

研究探讨了个体理解交往情景下说谎／说真话概念及其道德评价上的年龄差异,以及事实成份、交往动机与交往情景因素在其中的作用。结果表明：(1)3岁到4岁是说谎概念理解的转折点;(2)除3岁儿童外,大部分被试依据事实成份来理解谎前真话;(3)从小学开始,随着年龄的增长,个体对“白谎”与直率真话的道德评价中越来越多地考虑到交往动机或情景因素。     

Eliciting information and cues to deception using a model statement: Examining the effect of presentation modality

Forensic interviewing involves gathering information from a suspect or eyewitness. Administering a model statement during an interview results in greater information elicitation, which can enhance lie detection. Typically, a model statement is a highly detailed statement, on an unrelated topic to that of the interview. This study examined the effect of manipulating the modality of the MS, either by allowing participants to listen to (Audio‐MS), or read (Written‐MS) a model statement. A total of 162 (81 truth tellers, 81 liars) participants were randomly allocated to one of three interviewing conditions where they received either the Audio‐MS, Written‐MS, or No‐MS (control condition). Truth tellers honestly reported a “spy” mission, whereas liars performed a covert mission and lied about their activities. Results showed both model statements were equally more effective at eliciting information and facilitating lie detection, compared with a control condition. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Social influence in investigative interviews: The effects of authority on informational elements produced in interviews and written statements

This study examined the effect of a principle of social influence—authority—on the informational elements in an investigative interview. Community participants told the truth or lied about a mock crime in a high or low authority context. Informational elements were coded from their oral responses in the interviews and written responses in a statement prior to the interviews. Rapport was rated by the interviewers and participants. The authority condition produced effects on the informational elements in both the interviews and written statements but mainly for truth tellers. Rapport also had direct effects on the informational elements but authority did not affect rapport and rapport did not mediate the effect of authority on the informational elements. These findings had theoretical, empirical, and practical implications.     

Repeated Interrogations –Stretching the Deception Detection Paradigm

In real life, suspects are often subjected to repeatedinterrogations. Psycho-legal research on deception has neglectedthis fact. To remedy this mismatch a series of studies wasconducted mapping how repeated interrogations affectlie-catchers' judgemental processes, deception detectionperformance, and meta-assessments. In two experiments we foundthat lie-catchers given access to consecutive statements from onesuspect did not perform better than lie-catchers given access toone statement only. In addition, access to repeatedinterrogations inflated the lie-catchers' confidence in thecorrectness of their veracity judgement, which had a detrimentaleffect on the accuracy-confidence relation. As the basis forassessing veracity was changed from one to several statements thelie-catchers, to a large extent, seemed to trust the `consistencyheuristic'. The assumption underlying this heuristic is thatinconsistency implies deception and consistency implies truth.The data show that (a) people tend to disagree as to whether aparticular set of consecutive statements is consistent or not,and (b) deceptive statements are at least equally consistent astruthful statements. In order to explain the latter finding a`repeat vs. reconstruct' hypothesis was suggested, assuming thatliars try to repeat their initial statement, whereastruth-tellers try to reconstruct a previously experienced event.The low predictive accuracy found for the `consistency heuristic'strongly questions beliefs held by professional lie-catchers,opinions expressed in the psycho-legal literature andrecommendations found in applied interrogation manuals.