Can Lies Be Detected Unconsciously?

• Main Authors: David eShanks, Wen Ying eMoi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-08-01
• Series: Frontiers in Psychology
• Subjects: Decision Making; Lie Detection; choice; unconscious thought; Deliberation-without-attention
• Online Access: http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01221/full

People are typically poor at telling apart truthful and deceptive statements. Based on the Unconscious Thought Theory, it has been suggested that poor lie detection arises from the intrinsic limitations of conscious thinking and can be improved by facilitating the contribution of unconscious thought. In support of this hypothesis, Reinhard, Greifeneder, and Scharmach (2013) observed improved lie detection among participants engaging in unconscious thought. The present study aimed to replicate this unconscious thought advantage using a similar experimental procedure but with an important improvement in a key control condition. Specifically, participants judged the truthfulness of 8 video recordings in three thinking modes: immediately after watching them or after a period of unconscious or conscious deliberation. Results from two experiments (combined N = 226) failed to reveal a significant difference in lie detection accuracy between the thinking modes, even after efforts were made to facilitate the occurrence of an unconscious thought advantage in Experiment 2. The results imply that the unconscious thought advantage in deception detection is not a robust phenomenon.