Temporal distance and veracity effects on the level of detail in statements about intentions

Abstract

Construal level theory states that future events that are nearer in the future and events that are more likely to happen have lower construal levels, and therefore have less detail, than events that are further away and/or less likely to happen. Consistent with this theory, the number of details in a statement can be a moderately good cue to deception. If veracity and temporal distance both affect detail, detail may only be a good cue to deception about events that occur at certain temporal distances. This paper describes a study on whether temporal distance and veracity affect detail levels in statements about intentions. The results suggest that temporal distance and veracity do not affect detail levels in this dataset. Intentions that were completed also did not differ from uncompleted intentions. Overall, the study found no support for the hypothesised effects of temporal distance and veracity on level of detail.

The effect of individual differences in episodic future thought on credibility in occupation interviews

“…Two coders (blind to the veracity status of the participants) coded the episodic details task, participants' responses to all interview questions, and participants verbal descriptions of their workplace layout across all veracity conditions (truthful, forced lie, chosen lie) using the same perceptual details coding system in O'Connell, Carter, et al (2023). This coding system is similar to detail coding systems used in prior research (e.g., D'Argembeau et al, 2010; Warmelink et al, 2013; Warmelink & O'Connell, 2022). There were five detail coding categories: spatial, entity, sensory, though/emotion/action and temporal (see Supporting Information for category descriptions and examples).…”

An Idiographic Paradigm for Research on Cues to Deception: An Urgent Proposal

“…However, there was considerable variation in the random intercepts and slopes for participants and interview phases (see Figure 2), such that baseline level of detail, as well as how the level of detail changed during deception, varied widely across both We see similar indications of non-ergodicity for other cues. For instance, Calderon et al 26 synthesized transcriptions of truthful and deceptive statements from six experiments (total N = 528 people providing 6,104 messages [27][28][29][30][31][32] ). In these data, truthful and deceptive messages differed only slightly on average in terms of word count (i.e., the total number of words the participant used when answering each question in an interview), such that deceptive statements tended to be longer than truthful statements, g = 0.08, 95% CI [0.02, 0.14].…”