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

Reaction to Deviates and Conformers: The Effect of Regulatory Fit

Adherence to group norms is an important determinant of how members judge one another, with conformers typically being evaluated more positively than deviates (Levine & Kerr, 2007). This study tested predictions about reaction to conformers and deviates derived from Regulatory Fit Theory (Higgins, 2102), which takes account of people’s regulatory focus (promotion vs. prevention) and their manner of goal pursuit (eager vs. vigilant). According to the theory, because fit sustains an individual’s regulatory focus, it produces greater task engagement and intensification of affective responses to salient stimuli. The present study used a 2 (regulatory focus: promotion or prevention) x 2 (target status: deviate or conformer) x 2 (target advocacy style: eager or vigilant) between-participants design. After being induced to have either a promotion or prevention regulatory focus, male and female undergraduates in three-person groups reached consensus on a proposed senior thesis requirement, with most groups opposing the requirement (25 groups/condition). Participants then watched an ostensible student argue either for (deviate) or against (conformer) the requirement using either an eager or a vigilant advocacy style. Afterwards, participants discussed and evaluated the speaker and his message. For exploratory purposes, participants’ opinion change and the content and valence of their comments during the discussion were also assessed. Major predictions were that (a) regulatory fit would produce more task engagement (longer group discussions) than nonfit; (b) conformers would be evaluated more positively than deviates; (c) fit would intensify positive evaluations of conformers and negative evaluations of deviates; and (d) task engagement would mediate the impact of fit on reaction to both targets. Only the hypothesis that conformers would be evaluated more positively than deviates was confirmed. Additional analyses found that participants were more engaged when discussing deviates than conformers. There was also some evidence of minority influence by deviates. Finally, analyses of group discussions indicated that target status influenced both the content and valence of participants’ comments, and content and valence scores were related to the evaluation of the target. These results were interpreted, and directions for future research were suggested