On to part 4 of this series on research published in 2008 that I didn’t get a chance to blog about when it came out, where we take a peek at some of the new research on circumstances in which people lie and what makes them seem credible.
Part 1: Catching liars
Part 2: New technologies
Part 3: [...]
A new article from Zina Lee, Jessica R. Klaver and Stephen D. Hart reminds us that we need to be careful when assuming that promising results from lie detection studies where people without serious psychopathology are the subjects can be generalised to a forensic context.
Lee et al wondered whether a tool commonly used for assessing [...]
When do people think it might be ok to lie? Susanna Robinson Ning and Angela M. Crossman from John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York have just published the results of an interesting study of lie acceptability.
The authors start off with a good summary of the literature on lie acceptability, and age, gender, [...]
Dr. Vasudevi Reddy from the University of Portsmouth has garnered a fair amount of publicity for a study that “identified seven categories of deception used between six months and three-years-old”, according to the Daily Telegraph (1 July), which also reveals:
Whether lying about raiding the biscuit tin or denying they broke a toy, all children try [...]
A cog neuropsych perspective on confabulation from Kasey Metcalf and colleagues at Macquarie University in Australia:
Confabulation can be defined as statements or actions that involve distortions of memories. This paper reviews current theories of confabulation focusing on source monitoring, temporal-context, and retrieval theories. The attributes and criticisms of these three models are discussed. From this [...]
Lying and deceit is a common feature of psychopathy, yet few studies have explored the behaviours of psychopaths while they lie. In an in-press article to appear in Law and Human Behavior, Jessica R. Klaver, Zina Lee and Stephen D. Hart from Simon Fraser University in Canada write:
Extant research suggests that, contrary to what [...]
An interesting idea for a longitudinal study, reported in the December 2006 issue of Communication Research: Walid A. Afifi and John P. Caughlin set out to test the role of rumination and the decision to reveal or continue to conceal secrets. They recruited 342 students who reported that they were keeping a secret from [...]
As others (thank you Mind Hacks!) have pointed out, New Scientist issue 2572 (7 October) carried a cover feature on confabulation. As Science Direct is ever-so-kindly giving free online access to New Scientist for the next few weeks, you can read it for free via this link (select 7 October edition and scroll down [...]
The latest issue of Behavioral Sciences and the Law (Sept 2006) is a special on malingering. According to PsychNet-UK (drawing on DSM-IV):
Malingering can be expressed in several forms from pure malingering in which the individual falsifies all symptoms to partial malingering in which the individual has symptoms but exaggerates the impact which they [...]
The BPS Research Digest has a post this week (20 July) on a recently published study indicating that people make snap judgements of trustworthiness based on facial appearance.
“These findings suggest that minimal exposure to faces is sufficient for people to form trait impressions, and that additional exposure time can simply boost confidence in these impressions. [...]
The fabulous BPS Research Digest got there before me (9 June), drawing attention to a recent article on pathological lying, and adding a neat summary of the case.
The reference is:
Birch, C.D., Kelln, B.R.C. & Aquino, E.P.B. (2006). A review and case report of pseudologia fantastica. The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology, 17, 299-320.
From the [...]
In the latest issue of Law and Human Behavior, an article reporting the results of a study by Gail S. Goodman and her colleagues exploring whether observers could detect children’s lies. The authors tested both adults’ ability to detect lies told by children and adults, with some interesting findings, notably that
observers detected children’s lies [...]
In the January issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, James Tyler and his colleagues present results indicating that we tend to form negative impressions of those who lie to us (no surprise there), but that these impressions are moderated by the type and quanitiy of deceptive behaviour directed at us. Interestingly, it [...]
From The Sunday Times, November 20, 2005
Liar, liar, pants on fire… We tell one lie for every three minutes our mouths are open. Men and women tell different kinds of lie, and attractive people are the biggest fibbers of all. So why do we do it? The latest evidence shows that lying might be [...]
Liars’ brains make fibbing come naturally
NewScientist.com, 30 September 2005
[...] “Some people have an edge up on others in their ability to tell lies,” says Adrian Raine, a psychologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “They are better wired for the complex computations involved in sophisticated lies.” He found that pathological liars have [...]
Amanda K. Johnson, Allyson Barnacz, Toko Yokkaichi, Jennifer Rubio, Connie Racioppi, Todd K. Shackelford, Maryanne L. Fisher and Julian Paul Keenan
Personality and Individual Differences 38(8), pp1847-1853, June 2005
Deception has been studied extensively but still little is known about individual differences in deception ability. We investigated the relationship between self-awareness and deception ability. We enlisted novice [...]
NPR Research News, 6 June 2005
Do children know when someone is lying? One researcher, writing recently in the journal Science, says children are capable of understanding the concepts of self-interest and unconscious bias — and can even see through a lie.
See also:
Children Develop Cynicism At An Early Age
Yale University press release
Reference:
Mills, CM and Keil, FC [...]
Amanda K. Johnson, Allyson Barnacz, Paul Constantino, Jason Triano, Todd K. Shackelford and Julian Paul Keenan
Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 37, Issue 7 , November 2004, Pages 1417-1424
It was hypothesized that evolutionary factors including self-awareness and commitment are related to deception detection. In this study, 34 female undergraduates were tested for their ability to detect [...]
