Dull versus creative liars—Who deceives better? Fantasy proneness and verifiability of genuine and fabricated accounts

Irena Boskovic*, Ayla Ramakers, Ali Yunus Emre Akca

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The Verifiability Approach (VA), a lie detection method, postulates that genuine statements contain more verifiable information, whereas fabricated reports include more non-verifiable details. We investigated whether participants low (n = 19), medium (n = 23) and high (n = 26) on fantasy proneness differ in the (non)verifiability of their genuine and fabricated accounts. The results showed that groups did not differ in terms of statements' (non)verifiability. Overall, fabricated accounts included more non-verifiable details, but did not differ in verifiable details from genuine stories. The fabricated accounts from each group were given to legal psychology experts (N = 13) who rated accounts' authenticity. Experts more often recognised false accounts from the high fantasy proneness group, hence, high fantasy prone deceivers might be easier to detect than people with lower fantasy engagement. Overall, our results show that the VA is not sensitive to fantasy proneness, however, that experts might be.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)56-67
Number of pages12
JournalJournal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling
Volume18
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 6 Oct 2020

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Authors. Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Research programs

  • ESSB PSY

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