Remembrance of lies past: A comparison of the features and consistency of truthful and fabricated trauma narratives

Abstract

The credibility of reports of victimization must be evaluated by police and adjudicators. The present prospective study investigated the features of truthful and fabricated narratives of trauma and their relative consistency over a 6-month period. Participants described both a genuine and fabricated traumatic experience on three occasions over the 6 months. The narrative features were coded at each phase and the stories' consistency was examined at Times 2 and 3. We found that truthful trauma narratives contained more: details, contextual information, and emotional details, and were rated as more 'plausible', relative to fabricated traumas. The details of truthful narratives also were more factually consistent than fabricated narratives over the 6 month interval. This research offers basic information on the nature and consistency of traumatic memories, and potentially applicable information for discriminating true and false allegations.

Sidetracked by emotion: Observers’ ability to discriminate genuine and fabricated sexual assault allegations

“…In our study, it is conceivable that reading reports of sexual victimization induced a negative mood state, and that participants high in neuroticism were able to more efficiently evaluate and recognize plausible negative emotions and content in the narratives, thus improving their accuracy for truthful claims that contained such details. In general, research has found that fabricated traumas are less emotionally detailed relative to truthful traumas (e.g., Peace & Porter, in press; Porter, Peace, & Emmett, 2007), influencing the availability of this negative emotional content. As such, this helps to explain why neuroticism only was positively associated with truth accuracy (and not overall or lie accuracy).…”

“…Narratives describing incidents of sexual trauma in adulthood were collected as part of two previous studies (see Peace & Porter, in press; Peace, Porter, & ten Brinke, 2008), and the original participants consented to use of their narratives in future studies. Genuine sexual traumas were elicited from women who, via self‐referral, sought individual psychological services from a local sexual assault centre.…”

“…Fabricated claims of sexual assault were elicited from a sample of participants who indicated they had never been the victims of sexual assault, but freely admitted other types of traumatic victimization (reducing the likelihood they were lying about these experiences). Participants in this study were asked to report on a ‘fake trauma’ and describe this event convincingly and in as much detail as possible as if it had happened to them (Peace & Porter, in press). Selection criteria for the genuine and fabricated narratives/allegations relating to sexual assault were: the sexual assault had occurred as an adult, consent for use of data in further studies had been provided, and the narratives were of comparable lengths (matched across veracity).…”

Investigating Differences in Truthful and Fabricated Symptoms of Traumatic Stress over Time

“…After reviewing instructions and providing narrative descriptions of truthful and deceptive traumas (see Peace and Porter 2010), participants completed a series of selfreport symptom measures pertaining to both of these events (counterbalanced). In particular, they provided ratings of trauma symptomology on the IES-R, the PCL, and the TSI for each event type.…”

“…Narratives of their traumatic events were collected as part of a larger study on memory and credibility (see Peace and Porter 2010), and participants were told to complete symptoms with respect to the true and fabricated traumas (counterbalanced) they wrote about. For deceptive accounts, they were instructed to pretend as if the "fake trauma" had been experienced and to complete the symptom questionnaires as convincingly as possible.…”