Dissertation Information for Mark FrankNAME:
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SCHOOL: ADVISORS: COMMITTEE MEMBERS: MPACT Status: Complete - Except Indecipherables Title: Human lie detection ability as a function of the liar's motivation
Abstract: In everyday life, we often act as "human lie detectors." Laboratory experiments suggest that we are not very good at this task, rarely performing much better than chance. But such experiments rarely reproduce the motivational conditions found in real-life situations where there are real consequences for successful or unsuccessful lying. In this thesis, five studies were conducted to assess subjects' ability to detect lies told by individuals under incentives to lie successfully. The arousal levels (GSR) of the liars were also monitored. Contrary to expectations, the first study found that subjects could detect lying significantly less well when five target individuals played an arousing card game than when they lied in a non-arousing interview that carried no consequences for successful or unsuccessful lying. The second study showed that subjects detected lying among the card players most accurately when they viewed the players' full bodies and heard their voices, compared to other channels. There were, however, large individual differences among the card players in which channels most betrayed their lying. The third study attempted unsuccessfully to identify subsets of nonverbal behaviors that might predict each target individual's lying in either the card-playing or the interview situations. A fourth study was designed as a conceptual replication of study 1, but increasing the number of target individuals from 5 to 56 and removing some of the atypical features of the card-playing situation. In a simulated interview, target individuals were instructed to lie to any of 8 questions knowing that they would be rewarded for successful lying and punished for unsuccessful lying. Subjects who viewed videotapes of these interviews were able to detect lying at above chance levels, but accuracy was a complex interactive function of the subject's sex, accuracy feedback, channel, and the number of exposures to a particular target. The final study attempted to unsuccessfully identify subsets of nonverbal behaviors that might predict target individuals' lying. It was concluded that incentives for lying can make a target individual's lying either easier or harder to detect depending upon his or her familiarity with the situation. |
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Students under Mark Frank
ADVISEES:
- Insuk Oh - Rutgers University (2006)
COMMITTEESHIPS: