NCJ Number
238095
Journal
Legal and Criminological Psychology Volume: 17 Issue: 1 Dated: February 2012 Pages: 165-176
Date Published
February 2012
Length
12 pages
Annotation
This study examined the influence of persons' differences in emotional processing and levels of psychopathic traits on their ability to judge the truthfulness of written narratives that vary in emotional valence.
Abstract
The study found that participants' overall accuracy in detecting deception was close to chance; however, participants were more accurate in correctly identifying truthful narratives than deceptive narratives. Accuracy was poorest for emotional narratives, whether the emotion was positive or negative, when compared with assessments of emotionally neutral narratives. Psychopathy was not associated with levels of overall accuracy; however, it related to discriminating ability and differential use of cues in decisionmaking. Reported cue use also differed across emotional narrative conditions. The authors speculated that the findings were due to an emotional bias toward truth, detracting judges from recognizing valid cues indicative of the deception stimuli. Implications for deception detection in forensic settings are discussed. Undergraduate participants (N=251) judged the truthfulness of 12 written narratives across three emotional categories: positive, negative, and neutral events. Levels of psychopathy were assessed to investigate its relation to accuracy and cue use. 1 table, 2 figures, and 53 references