Been there before? Examining “familiarity” as a moderator for discriminating between true and false intentions

Abstract

Prospection is thinking about possible future states of the world. Commitment to perform a future action—commonly referred to as intention—is a specific type of prospection. This knowledge is relevant when trying to assess whether a stated intention is a lie or the truth. An important observation is that thinking of, and committing to, future actions often evoke vivid and detailed mental images. One factor that affects how specific a person experiences these simulations is location-familiarity. The purpose of this study was to examine to what extent location-familiarity moderates how liars and truth tellers describe a mental image in an investigative interview. Liars were instructed to plan a criminal act and truth tellers were instructed to plan a non-criminal act. Before they could carry out these acts, the participants were intercepted and interviewed about the mental images they may have had experienced in this planning phase. Truth tellers told the truth whereas liars used a cover story to mask their criminal intentions. As predicted, the results showed that the truth tellers reported a mental image significantly more often than the liars. If a mental image was reported, the content of the descriptions did not differ between liars and truth tellers. In a post interview questionnaire, the participants rated the vividness (i.e., content and clarity) of their mental images. The ratings revealed that the truth tellers had experienced their mental images more vividly during the planning phase than the liars. In conclusion, this study indicates that both prototypical and specific representations play a role in prospection. Although location-familiarity did not moderate how liars and truth tellers describe their mental images of the future, this study allows some interesting insights into human future thinking. How these findings can be helpful for distinguishing between true and false intentions will be discussed.

Visuospatial counter‐interrogation strategies by liars familiar with the alibi setting

“…Liars who were familiar with the job could not be distinguished from truth-tellers who were familiar with it, and liars who were unfamiliar with the job were rated as lowest in truthfulness. Finally, a study to discern true and false intentions among undergraduate students who fabricated or told the truth about an activity they intended to execute in a familiar or unfamiliar setting found that truth-tellers had a more vivid mental image of the activity and setting than liars (Knieps, Granhag, & Vrij, 2014). Although familiarity did not moderate these results, those who were familiar with the physical setting could describe it in more details than unfamiliar participants.…”

“…As it is common for liars to provide information about events they have experienced (Culhane, Hosch, & Kehn, 2008;Leins, Fisher, & Ross, 2013), they would want to familiarise themselves with the alibi setting to be able to demonstrate they were at the setting when the crime occurred. Previous familiarity studies have only examined the statements of liars who were either well familiar or not familiar at all with the reported event (Blandón-Gitlin et al, 2005;Knieps et al, 2014). Familiarity, however, involves different levels as suspects may be somehow familiar with the event or extremely familiar with it.…”

Future-minded: the role of prospection in Agency, Control, and other goal-directed processes

“…In this special issue titled “Future-minded: the role of prospection in Agency, Control, and other goal-directed processes” there is a range of contributions that include empirical studies examining prospection and emotional memories in a sleep paradigm (Cunningham et al, 2014 ), the connection between prospective memory and emotions in decision-making (Worthy et al, 2014 ), and the connection between prospection in the context of deception (Knieps et al, 2014 ). There are also three review papers that focus on different aspects of prospection such as the broad conceptual issues around prospection (Osman, 2014b ), the current insights from work on prospective memory (Walter and Meier, 2014 ), and the links between prospective memory and imagination (Zheng et al, 2014 ).…”

“…Unlike many specially issues, all the contributors (Cunningham et al, 2014 ; Knieps et al, 2014 ; Walter and Meier, 2014 ; Worthy et al, 2014 ; Zheng et al, 2014 ) took the time to define the concept that they were examining. This provides an important insight into the way in which this emerging field of research is conceptualized by the various researchers that are interested in it.…”

“…Worthy et al ( 2014 ) treats prospection as “… the representation and consideration of the future value of decisions” and Zheng et al ( 2014 ) claim that “… it allows individuals to ensure their future interest and prevent future losses in advance” consider the role of values and outcomes as a key factor in prospection. Knieps et al ( 2014 ) proposes that prospection involves “… thinking about possible future states of the world” and Osman ( 2014b ) claims that it is “the process of representing and planning for possible future states of the world,” both electing for a much broader conceptualization of the label prospection.…”