Belief and Deception
Detecting true and false opinions: The Devil's Advocate approach as a lie detection aid
Sharon Leal, Aldert Vrij, Samantha Mann & Ronald Fisher
Acta Psychologica, July 2010, Pages 323-329
Abstract:
We examined the efficacy of a new approach to detect truths and lies in expressing opinions: the Devil's Advocate approach. Interviewees are first asked an opinion eliciting question that asks participants to argue in favour of their personal view. This is followed by a Devil's Advocate question that asks participants to argue against their personal view. People normally think more about reasons that support rather than oppose their opinion. Therefore we expected truth tellers to provide more information and shorter latency times in their responses to the opinion eliciting question than to the Devil's Advocate question. Liars are expected to reveal the opposite pattern as the Devil's Advocate question is more compatible with their beliefs than is the opinion eliciting question. In Experiment 1, we interviewed seventeen truth tellers and liars via the Devil's Advocate approach and measured the difference in number of words and latency times to the two questions. Our hypotheses were supported. In Experiment 2, 25 observers were shown these interviews, and made qualitative judgements about the statements. Truth tellers' opinion eliciting answers were seen as more immediate and plausible and revealed more emotional involvement than their Devil's Advocate answers. No clear differences emerged in liars' answers to the two types of question. We conclude that the Devil's Advocate approach is a promising lie detection approach that deserves attention in future research.
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"Positive" Results Increase Down the Hierarchy of the Sciences
Daniele Fanelli
PLoS ONE, April 2010, e10068
Abstract:
The hypothesis of a Hierarchy of the Sciences with physical sciences at the top, social sciences at the bottom, and biological sciences in-between is nearly 200 years old. This order is intuitive and reflected in many features of academic life, but whether it reflects the "hardness" of scientific research-i.e., the extent to which research questions and results are determined by data and theories as opposed to non-cognitive factors-is controversial. This study analysed 2434 papers published in all disciplines and that declared to have tested a hypothesis. It was determined how many papers reported a "positive" (full or partial) or "negative" support for the tested hypothesis. If the hierarchy hypothesis is correct, then researchers in "softer" sciences should have fewer constraints to their conscious and unconscious biases, and therefore report more positive outcomes. Results confirmed the predictions at all levels considered: discipline, domain and methodology broadly defined. Controlling for observed differences between pure and applied disciplines, and between papers testing one or several hypotheses, the odds of reporting a positive result were around 5 times higher among papers in the disciplines of Psychology and Psychiatry and Economics and Business compared to Space Science, 2.3 times higher in the domain of social sciences compared to the physical sciences, and 3.4 times higher in studies applying behavioural and social methodologies on people compared to physical and chemical studies on non-biological material. In all comparisons, biological studies had intermediate values. These results suggest that the nature of hypotheses tested and the logical and methodological rigour employed to test them vary systematically across disciplines and fields, depending on the complexity of the subject matter and possibly other factors (e.g., a field's level of historical and/or intellectual development). On the other hand, these results support the scientific status of the social sciences against claims that they are completely subjective, by showing that, when they adopt a scientific approach to discovery, they differ from the natural sciences only by a matter of degree.
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Social Influences on Paranormal Belief: Popular Versus Scientific Support
Heather Ridolfo, Amy Baxter & Jeffrey Lucas
Current Research in Social Psychology, February 2010
Abstract:
Paranormal claims enjoy relatively widespread popular support despite by definition being rejected by the scientific community. We propose that belief in paranormal claims is influenced by how popular those claims are as well as by dominant scientific views on the claims. We additionally propose that individuals will be most likely to be positively influenced by the views of science when claims are unpopular. An experimental study varied instructions to participants in a 2x2 design which informed participants that a particular paranormal belief/claim (ESP) was very popular or not and was rejected by science or not. Participants then watched a brief video that appeared to present evidence of ESP. As predicted, participants became more likely to believe in ESP when claims were more popular. Contrary to predictions, participants appeared to react against the views of science when evaluating claims, particularly when they believed those claims were unpopular. This finding may reflect decreasing trust in the institution of science.
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Dopamine, Paranormal Belief, and the Detection of Meaningful Stimuli
Peter Krummenacher, Christine Mohr, Helene Haker & Peter Brugger
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, August 2010, Pages 1670-1681
Abstract:
Dopamine (DA) is suggested to improve perceptual and cognitive decisions by increasing the signal-to-noise ratio. Somewhat paradoxically, a hyperdopaminergia (arguably more accentuated in the right hemisphere) has also been implied in the genesis of unusual experiences such as hallucinations and paranormal thought. To test these opposing assumptions, we used two lateralized decision tasks, one with lexical (tapping left-hemisphere functions), the other with facial stimuli (tapping right-hemisphere functions). Participants were 40 healthy right-handed men, of whom 20 reported unusual, "paranormal" experiences and beliefs ("believers"), whereas the remaining participants were unexperienced and critical ("skeptics"). In a between-subject design, levodopa (200 mg) or placebo administration was balanced between belief groups (double-blind procedure). For each task and visual field, we calculated sensitivity (d′) and response tendency (criterion) derived from signal detection theory. Results showed the typical right visual field advantage for the lexical decision task and a higher d′ for verbal than facial stimuli. For the skeptics, d′ was lower in the levodopa than in the placebo group. Criterion analyses revealed that believers favored false alarms over misses, whereas skeptics displayed the opposite preference. Unexpectedly, under levodopa, these decision preferences were lower in both groups. We thus infer that levodopa (1) decreases sensitivity in perceptual-cognitive decisions, but only in skeptics, and (2) makes skeptics less and believers slightly more conservative. These results stand at odd to the common view that DA generally improves signal-to-noise ratios. Paranormal ideation seems an important personality dimension and should be assessed in investigations on the detection of signals in noise.
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Truth Is at Hand: How Gesture Adds Information During Investigative Interviews
Sara Broaders & Susan Goldin-Meadow
Psychological Science, May 2010, Pages 623-628
Abstract:
The accuracy of information obtained in forensic interviews is critically important to credibility in the legal system. Research has shown that the way interviewers frame questions influences the accuracy of witnesses' reports. A separate body of research has shown that speakers gesture spontaneously when they talk and that these gestures can convey information not found anywhere in the speakers' words. In our study, which joins these two literatures, we interviewed children about an event that they had witnessed. Our results demonstrate that (a) interviewers' gestures serve as a source of information (and, at times, misinformation) that can lead witnesses to report incorrect details, and (b) the gestures witnesses spontaneously produce during interviews convey substantive information that is often not conveyed anywhere in their speech, and thus would not appear in written transcripts of the proceedings. These findings underscore the need to attend to, and document, gestures produced in investigative interviews, particularly interviews conducted with children.
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Do Pressures to Publish Increase Scientists' Bias? An Empirical Support from US States Data
Daniele Fanelli
PLoS ONE, April 2010, e10271
Abstract:
The growing competition and "publish or perish" culture in academia might conflict with the objectivity and integrity of research, because it forces scientists to produce "publishable" results at all costs. Papers are less likely to be published and to be cited if they report "negative" results (results that fail to support the tested hypothesis). Therefore, if publication pressures increase scientific bias, the frequency of "positive" results in the literature should be higher in the more competitive and "productive" academic environments. This study verified this hypothesis by measuring the frequency of positive results in a large random sample of papers with a corresponding author based in the US. Across all disciplines, papers were more likely to support a tested hypothesis if their corresponding authors were working in states that, according to NSF data, produced more academic papers per capita. The size of this effect increased when controlling for state's per capita R&D expenditure and for study characteristics that previous research showed to correlate with the frequency of positive results, including discipline and methodology. Although the confounding effect of institutions' prestige could not be excluded (researchers in the more productive universities could be the most clever and successful in their experiments), these results support the hypothesis that competitive academic environments increase not only scientists' productivity but also their bias. The same phenomenon might be observed in other countries where academic competition and pressures to publish are high.
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Look who's talking! Facial appearance can bias source monitoring
Robert Nash, Olwen Bryer & Friederike Schlaghecken
Memory, May 2010, Pages 451-457
Abstract:
When we see a stranger's face we quickly form impressions of his or her personality, and expectations of how the stranger might behave. Might these intuitive character judgements bias source monitoring? Participants read headlines "reported" by a trustworthy- and an untrustworthy-looking reporter. Subsequently, participants recalled which reporter provided each headline. Source memory for likely-sounding headlines was most accurate when a trustworthy-looking reporter had provided the headlines. Conversely, source memory for unlikely-sounding headlines was most accurate when an untrustworthy-looking reporter had provided the headlines. This bias appeared to be driven by the use of decision criteria during retrieval rather than differences in memory encoding. Nevertheless, the bias was apparently unrelated to variations in subjective confidence. These results show for the first time that intuitive, stereotyped judgements of others' appearance can bias memory attributions analogously to the biases that occur when people receive explicit information to distinguish sources. We suggest possible real-life consequences of these stereotype-driven source-monitoring biases.
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The Effects of Presenting Imprecise Probabilities in Intelligence Forecasts
Nathan Dieckmann, Robert Mauro & Paul Slovic
Risk Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
How to assess and present analytic uncertainty to policymakers has emerged as an important topic in risk and policy analysis. Due to the complexity and deep uncertainty present in many forecasting domains, these reports are often fraught with analytic uncertainty. In three studies, we explore the effect of presenting probability assessments and analytic uncertainty through probability ranges. Participants were presented with mock intelligence forecasts that include narrative evidence as well as numerical probability assessments. Participants were sensitive to the ambiguity communicated through the confidence range. The narrative appeared to have a smaller effect on judgments when accompanied by a probability range as opposed to a point assessment. In one study, participants also thought that the probability range was more useful for decision making at a higher probability whereas the point estimate was more useful at a lower probability. When evaluating a forecast in hindsight, decisionmakers tended to report lower levels of blame and higher levels of source credibility for forecasts that reported ranges as compared to point assessments. These findings suggest that decisionmakers are not necessarily "ambiguity averse" in the forecasting context. Presenting ranges of probability may have distinct advantages as a way to communicate probability and analytic confidence to decisionmakers.
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Omri Gillath, Amanda Sesko, Phillip Shaver & David Chun
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, May 2010, Pages 841-855
Abstract:
Attachment security is hypothesized to promote authenticity and sincerity, or honesty, whereas insecurity is hypothesized to increase various forms of inauthenticity and dishonesty. The authors tested these ideas in 8 studies of dispositional and situational attachment insecurities and their influence on inauthenticity and dishonesty. The first 4 studies showed that authenticity is related to scoring low on the 2 dimensions of dispositional attachment insecurity-anxiety and avoidance-and that these 2 dimensions are associated with different aspects of inauthenticity. The first set of studies also showed that conscious and unconscious security priming increased state authenticity (compared with neutral or insecurity priming). The last 4 studies showed that attachment insecurity is related to dishonesty (lying and cheating) and that security priming reduces the tendency to lie or cheat and does so more effectively than positive mood priming. Implications for understanding the role of authenticity and inauthenticity in various relationship contexts are discussed.
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Content in Context Improves Deception Detection Accuracy
Pete Blair, Timothy Levine & Allison Shaw
Human Communication Research, July 2010, Pages 423-442
Abstract:
Past research has shown that people are only slightly better than chance at distinguishing truths from lies. Higher accuracy rates, however, are possible when contextual knowledge is used to judge the veracity of situated message content. The utility of content in context was shown in a series of experiments with students (N = 26, 45, 51, 25, 127) and experts (N = 66). Across studies, average accuracy was 75% in the content in context groups compared with 57% in the controls. These results demonstrate the importance of situating judges within a meaningful context and have important implications for deception theory.
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On Keynes's conception of the Weight of Evidence
Alberto Feduzi
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Various modern decision theories seek to capture the intuition behind Keynes's conception of evidential weight. Keynes was nevertheless hesitant about the practical relevance of weight in the process of rational decision making because of the ‘stopping problem' of finding a rational principle to decide where to stop the process of acquiring information in forming a probability judgment before making a decision. This paper discusses the relevance of the stopping problem by way of an inquiry into the nature, properties and implications for rational decision making of Keynes's conception of evidential weight. It is argued that in practical choice situations the decision maker often decides where to stop the process of acquiring information by following Keynes's advice to consider the degree of completeness of the available information before making a decision. This method implies that the decision maker is able to arrive at an assessment of the dimension of what may be called her ‘relevant ignorance'. By considering some examples of how the acquisition of new evidence may affect the decision maker's behaviour, it is argued that it is in fact possible to talk reasonably about relevant ignorance, or what are sometimes called ‘unknown unknowns', and that this concept might explain a range of human behaviours. While this concept does not provide a rational principle to solve the stopping problem, it does provide a method of inquiry for dealing with a number of paradoxes not solvable within the Bayesian approach.
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Alibi Believability: The Effect of Prior Convictions and Judicial Instructions
Meredith Allison & Elizabeth Brimacombe
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, May 2010, Pages 1054-1084
Abstract:
Undergraduates (N = 339) listened to a simulated police interview with a defendant concerning his alibi. We studied the impact of (a) the strength of the alibi evidence; (b) defendant's prior convictions; (c) judge's instructions on prior conviction evidence; and (d) perceivers' need for cognition (NFC) on alibi believability and defendant guilt ratings. Defendants previously convicted of the same crime as the current charge were seen as more likely to be guilty than defendants previously convicted of a different crime. Judge's instructions did not affect guilt ratings. NFC was less influential than anticipated, but did affect participants' understanding and recall of judicial instructions. Strong alibis were seen as more believable and led to lower guilt ratings than weak alibis.
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Decision Makers Facing Uncertainty: Theory versus Evidence
Paolo Giordani, Karl Schlag & Sanne Zwart
Journal of Economic Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper aims at assessing cultural differences in uncertainty attitude across Europe. We select questions from the European Values Survey (EVS) capturing salient features of uncertain scenarios ("safe versus uncertain", "freedom of choice" and "reduction of uncertainty"), and formalize these questions through simple decision-theoretic problems. We then consider three competing normative models of choice under uncertainty (subjective expected utility (SEU), maximin utility and minimax regret), and analyze how they behave when facing each decision problem. We obtain theoretical predictions and, using the EVS dataset, we test them via latent class analysis to estimate the distribution of these behaviors across EU15. We find a larger proportion of SEU maximizers (Bayesians) in northern countries than in southern countries. The opposite is true for maximin utility behavior. Only a few are consistent with minimax regret behavior.
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Credibility in Context: How Uncivil Online Commentary Affects News Credibility
Kjerstin Thorson, Emily Vraga & Brian Ekdale
Environmental Communication, July 2010, Pages 289-313
Abstract:
In the new media environment, hard news stories are no longer found solely in the "A" section of the paper or on the front page of a news Web site. They are now distributed widely, appearing in contexts as disparate as a partisan blog or your own e-mail inbox, forwarded by a friend. In this study, we investigate how the credibility of a news story is affected by the context in which it appears. Results of an experiment show a news story embedded in an uncivil partisan blog post appears more credible in contrast. Specifically, a blogger's incivility highlights the relative credibility of the newspaper article. We also find that incivility and partisan disagreement in an adjacent blog post produce stronger correlations between ratings of news and blog credibility. These findings suggest that news story credibility is affected by context and that these context effects can have surprising benefits for news organizations. Findings are consistent with predictions of social judgment theory.