Does mimicking others change your self-view?

Does mimicking affect the way you think about yourself in relation to other people? In the present study, we instructed participants to either mimic or not mimic the expressions of their interaction partner. After a 3-minute interaction, participants' self-view in relation to others was measured. Results revealed that mimickers defined themselves more in relation to others than nonmimickers. Thus, mimicking others, compared to not mimicking others, changes your self-view

The costs of lying

Deceiving others is generally viewed as immoral. However, most people lie on a daily basis. This paper examines the psychological consequences for the liars themselves, as they are participating in what is generally perceived as immoral behaviour. More specifically, this paper focuses on the effects of lying on the liar’s self-esteem and affect. We tested if lying, in comparison to telling the truth, lowers people’s self-esteem and increases negative experienced affect. In total, three cross-sectional and one longitudinal studies were conducted (N = 783). Results showed that lying decreased people’s self-esteem and increased negative affect, regardless of the type of lie (self-centered vs. other-oriented). Furthermore, lying on a given day decreased people’s self-esteem compared to their self-esteem on the previous day and to their average level of self-esteem across five days

Unconscious deception detection measured by finger skin temperature and indirect veracity judgments-results of a registered report

A pre-registered experiment was conducted to examine psychophysiological responses to being lied to. Bridging research on social cognition and deception detection, we hypothesized that observing a liar compared to a truth-teller would decrease finger skin temperature of observers. Participants first watched two targets while not forewarned that they would later be asked to judge (direct and indirect) veracity, and then watched another two targets while forewarned about this. During both these phases finger skin temperature was measured. Findings pertaining to temperature partly confirmed our main hypothesis. When participants were observing a liar, irrespective of being forewarned, on average finger skin temperature declined over time. In the forewarned phase, temperature trajectories of truth-tellers were higher than those of liars, however, in the not forewarned phase, this pattern was reversed. Results confirmed our further hypotheses that participants judge liars as less likeable and less trustworthy than truth-tellers—an indication of indirect deception detection. Our hypothesis that the effect size for trustworthiness would be bigger than that of liking was not supported by the data. Additionally, and also confirming our hypothesis, participants performed around chance level when directly judging whether the target person was lying. Exploratory analyses are reported with regard to truth bias and dependency between direct and indirect veracity judgments. Limitations and directions for future work related to the existence of psychophysiological indicators of deception detection are discussed

Development of metacognitive skills in young adolescents : a bumpy ride to the high road

This thesis shows the final results of a longitudinal project where the same participants (12 to 15 yrs.) were followed for three consecutive years. The first objective of this study was to investigate the development of both quantity and quality of metacognitive skills. The second objective was to establish whether the development of metacognitive skills is intelligence-related or relatively intelligence-independent. Finally, the generality vs. domain-specificity of developing metacognitive skills was investigated. While thinking aloud, participants performed two different tasks representing two different domains: A text-studying task and a problem-solving task. Participants__ intellectual ability was assessed, as well as their metacognitive skills and learning performance for both domains separately. In summary, this thesis has shown that (1) Metacognitive skills do increase spontaneously in frequency and quality during young adolescence, albeit not continuously. The various subscales of metacognitive skillfulness do not develop at the same pace; (2) Metacognitive skills have their own contribution to the prediction of learning performance, on top of intellectual ability. The relation between intellectual ability and metacognitive skills as predictors of learning performance is not affected by development between 12 and 15 yrs.; (3) Around the age of 15 yrs. metacognitive skills become fully general.LEI Universiteit LeidenDevelopmental pathways of social-emotional and cognitive functioning - ou

The effects of facial attractiveness and trustworthiness in online peer-to-peer markets

Online peer-to-peer markets, such as Airbnb, often include profile photos of sellers to reduce anonymity. Ert, Fleischer, and Magen (2016) found that more trustworthy-looking, but not more attractive-looking, Airbnb hosts from Stockholm charge higher prices for similar apartments. This suggests that people are willing to pay more for a night in an apartment if the host looks trustworthy. Here, we present a pre-registered replication testing how photo-based impressions of hosts’ attractiveness and trustworthiness influence rental prices. We extend previous investigations by (a) controlling for additional features related to price (e.g., the apartment’s location value), (b) testing for an influence of other host features, such as race and facial expression, and (c) analyzing a substantially larger sample of apartments. An analysis of 1,020 listings in New York City showed that more attractive-looking, but not more trustworthy-looking, hosts charge higher prices for their apartments. Compared to White hosts, Black (but not Asian) hosts charge lower prices for their apartments. Hosts who smile more intensely in their profile photo charge higher prices. Our results support the general conclusion that people rely on profile photos in online markets, though we find that attractiveness is more important than trustworthiness. Keywords: first impressions, peer-to-peer markets, trustworthiness, attractivenes

Response: commentary: distrust, false cues, and below-chance deception detection accuracy: commentary on Stel et al. (2020) and further reflections on (un)conscious lie detection from the perspective of truth-default theory

People often mistake other people’s deceits for truths (i.e., the truth bias; McCornack and Parks,1986). The Adaptive-Lie-Detector theory suggests that people make informed judgments usingreliable cues. A possible explanation for the truth bias is that when cues are absent, people makean “educated guess” based on most communication being honest (Street, 2015). Stel et al. (2020)investigated whether inducing contextual distrust could be the antidote for this bias. Based onprevious evidence that (1) distrust may induce conscious thought (e.g., Mayo, 2015) and (2)conscious processes can hinder the ability to detect deception (e.g., Reinhard et al., 2013), weexpected and found that participants are less accurate in judging deceits and truths when contextualdistrust (vs. trust) is induced, which was partly due to participants relying more on false beliefsabout deception.In his commentary on Stel et al. (2020), Levine (2021) agreed that (1) distrust hampers correctdeception judgments and that (2) distrust involves conscious processing. He was, however, skepticalthat deception cues could explain why distrust hampered truth detection. The main arguments werethat Stel et al. found (1) below chance-accuracy in the distrust condition, (2) which was explainedby more reliance on false deception cues. Levine states that the deception cues used in Stel et al.are generally non-diagnostic rather than antidiagnostic. He argued the findings are not in line withprevious findings and his theoretical perspective. Here, we react to these comments and argue thatour findings do not contradict, but expand previous findings.Social decision makin