The effects of cheating on deception detection during a social dilemma

Research by social psychologists and others consistently finds that people are poor at detecting attempted deception by others. However, Tooby and Cosmides (cognitive psychologists who favor evolutionary analyses of behavior) have argued and shown that humans have evolved a special “cognitive module” for detecting cheaters. Their research suggests that people are good at detecting cheating by group members. These two literatures seem to be at odds with one another. The hypothesis of this research was that when participants are told a lie by a fellow group member whose attempted deception involves cheating on a task that affects their outcomes, they will be good at detecting deception. In this experiment, participants played blackjack in groups using a social dilemma paradigm. Participants’ outcomes were either interdependent or independent with a confederate’s outcomes. It was predicted that participants whose outcomes were interdependent with the confederate would be better at detecting deception by the confederate than those participants whose outcomes were independent from the confederate’s outcomes. Results indicate that when judging other participants’ lies interdependent players were more successful at deception detection than independent players but were not more sensitive to the lies. This effect may be driven by the truth bias, people assume that their interaction partners are truthful which would explain why sensitivity measures (which remove response biases) did not show the hypothesized effect. Independent players were not more successful or sensitive when judging the confederate’s lies. The failure to find the hypothesized effect may be due to methodological factors. Both participants heard may have had their cheating detection modules activated when hearing the instructions for the experiment which implied that cheating could occur. Overall success rates support this idea because they were significantly higher than success rates reached by most deception detection research (50%) which may be indicative that both participants cheating detection modules were active. Results also indicate that as the number of lies told increases overall success decreases but success at detecting lies and sensitivity increase. Thus the more lies that are told the better people are at catching them

Definition of a near real time microbiological monitor for space vehicles

Efforts to identify the ideal candidate to serve as the biological monitor on the space station Freedom are discussed. The literature review, the evaluation scheme, descriptions of candidate monitors, experimental studies, test beds, and culture techniques are discussed. Particular attention is given to descriptions of five candidate monitors or monitoring techniques: laser light scattering, primary fluorescence, secondary fluorescence, the volatile product detector, and the surface acoustic wave detector

Judgment and Choice in Personnel Selection

[Excerpt] Imagine that you have set out to buy a used car. You examine eight cars before making your choice, test driving some of them and rejecting others at first glance (due for example to excessive rust). A researcher asks you to rate each of the eight cars in terms of overall quality. The researcher proceeds to sharply criticize you for carrying out an unsystematic search process. Your failure to test-drive every car and to ask the same questions to the dealers about each car has caused you to do a poor job of rank-ordering the cars. You respond that, since you could only afford one car, you had no interest in rank-ordering or in assigning ratings to the entire set of cars. It seems unfair to be criticized for poor performance of a task which was unrelated to your original mission of buying the best used car available. This paper explores the possibility that a similar misspecification of the goals of employee selection has caused researchers to criticize selectors for behavior which may not adversely affect the goal of hiring the best individual from among a group of candidates

The First Sign: Detecting Future Financial Fraud from the IPO Prospectus

In this study, I examine whether it is possible to predict future financial statement fraud using disclosure content prior to the fraud. Specifically, I employ a machine learning algorithm to construct a unique measure based on the lexical cues embedded within a firm’s first public disclosure, the Management’s Discussion and Analysis section of the S-1 filing, during the Initial Public Offering process. I use this measure to predict whether a firm that is not already committing fraud will commit fraud within five years of the Initial Public Offering (IPO) that results in an Accounting or Enforcement Release (AAER). I find there is information within the S-1 filing that is useful in the prediction of out-of-sample fraud. Additionally, I find that the measure performs better than both benchmark measures from prior literature and a new measure using quantitative information, when using information available at the S-1 date. Furthermore, the lexical cues measure performs well in predicting fraud relative to the benchmark measures even after updating the benchmark measures with misstated annual filings to aid their (but not my measure’s) fraud detection abilities. I find that my new measure is not limited to only predicting AAER based misconduct, but that the out-of-sample results hold when using an alternate sample based on 10(b)-5 filings as well as a comprehensive set of quantitative variables. Lastly, my measure identifies firms more likely to manage earnings to meet/beat analyst forecasts, firms who experience higher levels of information asymmetry around earnings announcements within the five years following the IPO, and has some predictive ability over future abnormal returns

Simulated subaverage performance on the Block Span task of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales-Fifth Edition

As clinical psychologists and neuropsychologists routinely assess individuals in medicolegal and criminal forensic settings, they are faced with the challenge of evaluating and testifying on the validity of these psychological and neuropsychological assessments. Individuals possess various motives for manipulating their responses or performance on psychological and neuropsychological assessment instruments. Malingering refers to poor effort on psychological and neuropsychological tests when an external incentive is present to reward poor performance. Malingering can be assessed by stand-alone measures of effort or measures derived from the response profiles of traditionally administered neuropsychological and psychological tests. Using a dataset from the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales-Fifth Edition (SB-V; Roid, 2003a) validation, the present study derived an embedded validity index from the SB-V to be used in the clinical detection of feigned mental retardation. The author explored the utility of this index in discriminating analog malingerers from individuals with genuine FSIQ scores in the mild mental retardation range (i.e., FSIQ scores from 50 to 75). The newly developed Block Span validity index demonstrated a sensitivity rate of 52% and a specificity rate of 100% in discriminating analog malingerers from individuals with genuine SB-V FSIQ scores in the mild mental retardation range. Analog malingerers in the aforementioned analysis had SB-V FSIQ scores ranging from 40 to 110. When analog malingerers with SB-V FSIQ scores above 85 were excluded from analyses, the sensitivity rate of the Block Span validity index was 63%, and the specificity rate was 100% in detecting feigned mental retardation from genuine impairment

A framework for the classification of accounts manipulations

Accounts manipulations have been a matter of research, discussion and, even, controversy in several countries such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and France. The objective of this paper is to elaborate a general framework for classifying accounts manipulations through a thorough review of the literature. This framework is based on the desire to influence the market participants' perception of the risk associated to the firm. The risk is materialized through the earnings per share and the debt/equity ratio. The literature on this topic is already very rich, although we have identified series of areas in need for further research.accounts manipulations; earnings management; income smoothing; big bath accounting; creative accounting

Impact Factor: outdated artefact or stepping-stone to journal certification?

A review of Garfield's journal impact factor and its specific implementation as the Thomson Reuters Impact Factor reveals several weaknesses in this commonly-used indicator of journal standing. Key limitations include the mismatch between citing and cited documents, the deceptive display of three decimals that belies the real precision, and the absence of confidence intervals. These are minor issues that are easily amended and should be corrected, but more substantive improvements are needed. There are indications that the scientific community seeks and needs better certification of journal procedures to improve the quality of published science. Comprehensive certification of editorial and review procedures could help ensure adequate procedures to detect duplicate and fraudulent submissions.Comment: 25 pages, 12 figures, 6 table