Assignment
Much of the research about deception is about trying to identify reliable cues liars make that can be used to more accurately detect when someone is being honest or not. After decades of research, the conclusion seems to be that there are few, if any, genuinely reliable cues to deception. Nonetheless, lying and detecting lies is something people do all the time, and so understanding the psychology of deception remains imperative. This internship involves supporting research that approaches the problem of deception from a different perspective – since there are so few reliable cues to deception, how do people decide whether they think someone is being truthful or not?
Your exact activities are likely to vary depending on your interest and the specific needs of the project, but are likely to include collecting experimental data, supporting a systematic scoping review about the current research about how people make veracity judgements, and supporting field research.
These activities can also form inspiration or the basis for an MSc thesis on the topic.
KEYWORDS
Deception; Veracity; Lies; Deception detection; Deception judgements.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION ORGANIZATION
The section Psychology of Conflict, Risk and Safety at the University of Twente has a distinctive and unique profile in the areas of risk perception and risk communication, conflict and crisis management and the antecedents of risky, antisocial and criminal behaviour. It currently includes 15 research staff members and 6 PhD students. We work from both a psychology and an engineering perspective and cooperate with other scientific disciplines, based on the “high tech, human touch” profile of the University of Twente.
AVAILABILITY
Available in block 2B. This internship is open for 1 student.
INTERESTED?
Please contact the PCRS internship coordinator Miriam Oostinga (m.s.d.oostinga@utwente.nl).
LITERATURE
- Stel, M., Schwarz, A., van Dijk, E., & van Knippenberg, A. (2020). The Limits of Conscious Deception Detection: When Reliance on False Deception Cues Contributes to Inaccurate Judgments [Original Research]. Frontiers in Psychology, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01331
- Luke, T. J. (2019). Lessons From Pinocchio: Cues to Deception May Be Highly Exaggerated. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 14(4), 646-671. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691619838258
- Hartwig, M., & Bond, C. F., Jr. (2011). Why do lie-catchers fail? A lens model meta-analysis of human lie judgments. Psychological Bulletin, 137(4), 643–659. https://doi.org/10.1037/a002358.
- Levine, T. R., & Street, C. N. H. (2024). Lie–truth judgments: adaptive lie detector account and truth-default theory compared and contrasted. Communication Theory. https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtae008