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

Abstract

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