The stability bias effect amongst lie-tellers: Testing the ‘miscalibration’ and ‘strategic’ hypotheses

Harvey, Adam; Vrij, Aldert; Hope, Lorraine; Mann, Samantha

Abstract

Unlike truth-tellers’ statements that show forgetting, lie-tellers’ statements appear less sensitive to delay. For lie-tellers, this failure to correctly simulate forgetting has been referred to as a stability bias. This experiment tests two explanations for this stability bias: the “miscalibration” hypothesis and the “strategic” hypothesis. Using a 2 (Task Type: Recall Estimate vs. Strategic Estimate) × 2 (Delay: Immediate vs. 3-week delay) design, participants (n = 142) either estimated how much detail a truth-teller might remember from an intelligence briefing (testing the miscalibration hypothesis), or how much detail was necessary to make a fabricated statement about the same intelligence briefing appear convincing to others (testing the strategic hypothesis). Before making these estimates, participants were informed that the briefing occurred immediately beforehand, or 3 weeks beforehand. Recall estimates correctly predicted forgetting would occur after a 3-week delay. Strategic estimates did not vary as a function of statement-time. No differences in subjective beliefs emerged. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 10, 2021
• Online Publication Date: Mar 11, 2022
• Publication Date: 2022-10
• Deposit Date: May 20, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: May 20, 2022
• Journal: Journal of Applied Research In Memory and Cognition (JARMAC)
• Print ISSN: 2211-3681
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 11
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 437–444
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/mac0000019
• Keywords: Deception; stability bias effect; forgetting; delay; metacognition.
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/9538717