Application of the implicit association test to a study on deception.
Three experiments were conducted to find out whether the standard Implicit Association Test (IAT) could be used to distinguish truthful and deceitful witnesses. We anticipated that IAT effects would be greater after lying. Participants were asked to answer questions with incorrect answers (i.e., the lie condition) or correct answers (i.e., the truthful condition). A third group of participants were not interviewed (a control group). Participants then took the IAT, in which they were asked to associate correct and incorrect answers with positive or negative attributes. Results demonstrate that standard IAT effects are greater after lying than after truth telling, but only when attribute labels were clearly and explicitly linked to positive and negative affect. Theoretical implications are considered.
Department of Psychology, Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester, NH 03106-1045, USA. p.frost@snhu.edu
Peter
P
Frost
Michael
M
Adie
Roland
R
Denomme
Annabel
A
Lahaie
Angela
A
Sibley
Emily
E
Smith
D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008014:Lie Detection / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D014342:Truth Disclosure; D014936:Word Association Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*