The Fundamental Attribution Error in Detecting Deception: The Boy-Who-Cried-Wolf Effect

Abstract

Most people are unable to detect accurately when others are lying. Many explanations for this inability have been suggested but the cognitive heuristics involved in lie detection have received little attention. The present study offers evidence from two experiments, based on two different groups of observers, judging two different kinds of lies, presented in two different testing situations, that the fundamental attribution error significantly undermines the ability to detect honesty and deception accurately. Trait judgments of trustworthiness were highly correlated with state judgments of truthfulness, leading, as predicted, to positive correlations with honest detection accuracy and negative correlations with deception detection accuracy. More accurate lie detectors were significantly more likely than less accurate lie detectors to separate state and trait judgments of honesty. The effect of other biases, such as the halo effect and the truthfulness bias, also are examined. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

The Process of Becoming Suspicious of Ulterior Motives

“…This very robust phenomenon, again, reflects the tendency to take behavior at face value. More recent research by O'Sullivan (2003) suggests that the fundamental attribution error significantly undermines the ability to detect honesty and deception accurately. She found evidence that when observers thought positively about someone, they also tended to believe the other person was telling the truth even when the person was lying.…”

Educing Information - Interrogation: Science and Art, Foundations for the Future

“…Examples of relevant research include studies on the impact of interviewer and interviewee personality characteristics, 58,59,60,61,62,63 expectancy effects, 13,64 social biases, [65][66][67] and interviewer and interviewee confi dence, 68,69 to name a few. These studies highlight the very complex nature of this problem and the need for substantially more research on these moderator variables.…”

“…The development of a useful counterstrategy will need to be informed by a solid understanding of the target cultures, ideologies, and languages to be relevant and effective. 67 While much of the resistance posed by sources is ad hoc in nature, one cannot overlook the role of formalized resistance training. As the so-called Al Qaeda Manual attests, that organization has compiled a systematic resistance strategy for employment by operatives taken into custody.…”

“…Finally, it might require this wealth of resources to correctly assess if a source's failure to answer a pertinent question is the result of defi ance or poor knowledgeability. 67 In the author's recent discussion of this challenging scenario with a SERE psychologist, there emerged the novel idea of applying deprogramming methods used in the U.S. and abroad to help "rescue" individuals from the destructive infl uence of religious cults. 68 A document described as an Al Qaeda training manual was discovered by the Manchester (England) Metropolitan Police Department in the course of a raid on the home of a suspected Al Qaeda operative.…”

Modeling Inter-item Variance of Item Response Theory:

“…(1) (2) (3) × (4) (5) (e.g., Anusic, Schimmack, Pinkus, & Lockwood, 2009;Jennings, Palmer, & Thomas, 2004;Ng, Koh, Ang, Kennedy, & Chan, 2011;O'Sullivan, 2003;Palmer, & Feldman, 2005;Palmer, & Loveland, 2008;Viswesvaran, Schmidt, & Ones, 2005) 3…”