An initial sample of 248 male and female undergraduates
at a regional campus of a Midwestern university participated as partial fulfillment of a research requirement in
their Introductory Psychology course. To keep the sample
somewhat homogenous, we used only data from unmarried, heterosexual, 18- to 25-year-old participants.
Thanks. So it’s a rather small and unrepresentative sample for men and women in general, but the study does supply a clue about whether people answer scientific study questions accurately. Of course, we still don’t know about their actual sex lives, and we don’t know how many decided that it was worth bluffing the “lie detector”.
Edited to add: I’d expect college students to be more likely to have heard that even real lie detectors aren’t accurate. I could be wrong about that.…
. If a self-enhancing presentation (e.g., conformity to gender role norms) is inconsistent with one’s true attitudes and behavior (e.g., deviance from gender role norms), an individual who gives self-enhancing responses risks being detected as lying or as lacking self-awareness. The bogus pipeline method motivates individuals to eschew self-enhancement in favor of honest and accurate answers to avoid embarrassment (Sabini, Siepmann, & Stein, 2001).
Basically the thought of being embarrsed by getting caught lying feels worse then the thought of admitting a high number of sexual partners.
You don’t need a lie detector that’s 100% accurate to trigger that effect.
I’d expect college students to be more likely to have heard that even real lie detectors aren’t accurate.
Sure, but “more likely” here means a base rate of maybe 1% instead of a base rate of maybe 0.1%. Either way, the fact that they even mentioned lie detection is likely to scare people into telling the truth whether or not they believe (as opposed to alieve) that lie detectors work.
They ask you at the end if you thought the experiment was real or if you thought the researchers fibbed. Then they exclude the ones who weren’t fooled.
Link to the original study: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224490309552164
As far as to the sample they studied:
PDF.
Thanks. So it’s a rather small and unrepresentative sample for men and women in general, but the study does supply a clue about whether people answer scientific study questions accurately. Of course, we still don’t know about their actual sex lives, and we don’t know how many decided that it was worth bluffing the “lie detector”.
Edited to add: I’d expect college students to be more likely to have heard that even real lie detectors aren’t accurate. I could be wrong about that.…
According to the study:
Basically the thought of being embarrsed by getting caught lying feels worse then the thought of admitting a high number of sexual partners. You don’t need a lie detector that’s 100% accurate to trigger that effect.
Sure, but “more likely” here means a base rate of maybe 1% instead of a base rate of maybe 0.1%. Either way, the fact that they even mentioned lie detection is likely to scare people into telling the truth whether or not they believe (as opposed to alieve) that lie detectors work.
Good point about alief vs. belief about lie detectors.
My guess would be an order of magnitude larger than that (but still much less than 50%).
They ask you at the end if you thought the experiment was real or if you thought the researchers fibbed. Then they exclude the ones who weren’t fooled.