The Effects of Cognitive Capacity and Suspicion on Truth Bias

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of cognitive capacity and suspicion on veracity judgments. It was hypothesized that under low suspicion conditions, truth bias would be more pronounced when participants had low cognitive capacity than when participants had high cognitive capacity. One hundred and seven participants viewed presentations of people either truthfully or deceptively describing a series of pictures. Prior to the presentations, a short description designed to increase suspicion was read to half the participants. Participants viewed half of the presentations while working on arithmetic problems (low capacity) and the other half while not working on arithmetic problems (high capacity). Following each presentation, the participants were required to evaluate the communicator's performance on a number of scales and indicate whether the communicator was actually describing the picture. The results partially supported the hypothesis.

The Effect of Suspicion on Deception Detection Accuracy: Optimal Level or Opposing Effects?

“…This has been observed across different relational types including romantic couples (McCornack & Levine, 1990), friends (Stiff, Kim, & Ramesh, 1992), and strangers (Hubbell, Mitchell, & Gee, 2001;Millar & Millar, 1997). Additionally, suspicion has been found to diminish truth-bias in both interactive (Stiff et al, 1992) and noninteractive research designs (e.g., McCornack & Levine, 1990).…”

Individual Differences Predicting Impression Management Detection in Job Interviews

“…Buller and Burgoon's (1996) IDT suggests that evaluators should initially characterize the person they evaluate as honest but must correct this impression if cues suggesting deceptions are made available to them. Yet, such a correction is cognitively demanding, and individuals with lower cognitive capacity may fail to correct initial judgments and engage in truth bias (i.e., believing that most people are truthful; Millar & Millar, 1997). Similarly, a dual-process approach to deception detection (Reinhard & Sporer, 2008 suggests that individuals can engage in either effortful and systematic or effortless and heuristic-based information processing.…”

“…Several studies explored evaluators' cognitions by manipulating (rather than measuring) cognitive capacity, for instance by creating high versus low cognitive load conditions. Initial examinations of the impact of cognitive load on deception detection led to mixed results (Feeley & Young, 2000;Millar & Millar, 1997). But recent studies have highlighted more encouraging results.…”

ALIED: Humans as adaptive lie detectors.

“…People are more likely to make lie judgments when made suspicious than when they are not suspicious (e.g., Levine & McCornack, 1991; McCornack & Levine, 1990;Stiff et al, 1992;Toris & DePaulo, 1985), even when cognitive resources are limited by means of a cognitive load (M. G. Millar & Millar, 1997 …”