Psychopathic Traits. The Self-Report Psychopathy Scale: Version III (SRP-III) was used to measure psychopathic traits of interviewees in this study. This scale consists of 64 items measured on a 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) likert scale. The SRP-III is divided into four facets: callous affect, interpersonal manipulation, erratic
114
lifestyle and anti-social traits, which are associated with Factors 1 and 2 of the original PCL-R (Williams & Paulhus, 2004). The SRP-III is also consistent with the expansion of the two factor model into four facets: Impulsive Thrill-seeking, Anti-Social Behaviour, Interpersonal Manipulation, and Cold Affect. The SRP-III has been demonstrated to be related to anti-social personality and behaviours (Williams et al., 2007). This measure has been demonstrated to be an appropriate measure of subclinical psychopathic traits (Williams et al., 2003).
Social Dominance. Social dominance was measured using the Self-Perceived Social Status Questionnaire (SSSS: Buttmore, James & Kirkpatrick, 2005). This self- report scale was measured on a 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) Likert scale. The SSSS consists of a scale of social dominance and a scale of prestige. Social
dominance involves using aggressive and forceful tactics to exert control. Specific items on this scale are “I demand respect from members of my peer group,” and “Others believe they can push me around” (reverse-scored). Prestige involves gaining social status not by having a forceful or assertive personality, but instead by having skills and competencies that are useful to the group. While prestige has been noted to be a factor in areas of peer influence, this subscale is beyond the scope of this paper and was not included in analyses.
Videos. Participants were shown segments from the CIS as completed in Logue et al. (2015). In a previous study (Logue et al., 2015) participants were interviewed after completing a game scenario adapted from Vrij, Mann, Leal, and Fisher (2010).
Participants in the Truthful condition of this study played a game with a confederate, during which they were left alone in a room with a wallet. Eventually, the participant
115
was confronted about money that had allegedly been stolen from a wallet that was in the room during the game. Instead of actually participating in the scenario, participants in the Deceptive condition were provided a transcript of the sequence of events in the Truth condition, and directed to take the money out of the wallet. They were then directed to use this template to construct a convincing lie and given equivalent time to practice it. Depending on condition, participants were told that they would win/keep the money if they were able to convince the interviewer of their innocence. After completing the initial scenario, participants in both conditions were interviewed using the CIS. The videos of these interviews served as the materials that participants in the current study used to rate honesty and deception. These videos depict the interviewee, facing the camera in a “first person perspective” to the right of the interviewer. The interviewer is not visible in any of the videos. The camera was approximately 5 feet away from the interviewee and was adjusted to provide a clear view of the interviewee’s face, arms and body below the knee. The current study required that raters were able to view the initial (control) and final question of the CIS. Interviews were limited to a maximum total time of 3 minutes, including the questions of the interviewer. One hundred videos of the original 157 were selected. Only 38 truthful videos fit these criteria, and therefore all were included in the 100 stimulus materials. The remaining videos were randomly selected out of a pool of deceptive videos that met the aforementioned time constraints.
4.2.3 Procedure
Sessions were conducted in groups of up to eight participants, and composition was determined through self-selection on a university website. Each participant watched 10 interviewees answer both the first and last question of the CIS. After each question,
116
participants were asked to rate the honesty of the interviewee, so that there were two ratings per interview, and a total of 20. Each interview was watched a total of 40 times, to create an aggregate score of honesty, and interviews were counterbalanced to avoid practice effects.
The first question that each interviewee responded to was:
“Please tell me in as much detail as possible, what happened when you were in the room with [Researcher 1] just now. Please mention all details, all conversations that took place, and give as much information as possible, including everyone whom entered the room, however irrelevant it may seem. Please tell me as much as you possibly can, as I will use all the information to decide whether or not I think you are telling the truth.”
This question served as the initial recall of the event.
The second question each interviewee responded to was:
“Please tell me in as much detail as possible, what happened when you were in the room with [Researcher 1] just now. Please mention all details, all conversations that took place, and give as much information as possible, including everyone whom entered the room, however irrelevant it may seem. Please tell me as much as you possibly can, as I will use all the information to decide whether or not I think you are telling the truth. It is very important that you tell me all of the information you have told me throughout the interview, even if you have mentioned it in previous questions, as well as anything else you may like to add. This will be your last chance to convince me you are telling the truth.”
117
This question was the last question in the CIS protocol, which served as a final, comprehensive account after all of the steps had been completed. The videos depicted the full answers of the interviewee. The interviewer did not ask any follow-up or clarifying questions. At the conclusion of each clip participants were asked make judgements on the truthfulness of each answer. Participants viewed the interview on a large projector screen collectively, but provided ratings of honesty individually. A researcher was present in the room to ensure independent ratings. As previously stated, participants rated truthfulness after both the initial and final questions of each interview.
4.2.3 (a) Scoring Criteria
Observer Ratings. Participants were requested to provide judgments of
deceptiveness after each interview question in the following ways. First, they were asked to provide an initial categorical judgment by circling T (truthful) or D (deceptive). Additionally, participants also rated the level of honesty after each answer on a 1 (very untruthful) to 6 (very truthful) Likert scale.
Qualitative Measure. At the conclusion of the study, after watching and rating all videos, participants were requested to provide researchers with the criteria they used to judge truthfulness. Answers were provided in an open-ended format to provide insight into the general strategies that participants used to make judgments.
Reality Monitoring. Scoring was conducted by an additional researcher, blind to experimental condition. The researcher scored the last CIS responses based on six Reality Monitoring criteria: visual, spatial, auditory, temporal, affective, and cognitive details. Scoring consists of a simple frequency tally of each criterion. The Reality
118
Monitoring criteria used in this study are concrete, unambiguous, reliable, and simple to score. It should be noted that in this study cognitive operations refers to inferred motivations and thought processes of others, rather than one’s own thoughts. There is a debate in the literature regarding the operationalization of cognitive operations. The authors adopt the viewpoint of McCormack et al. (2009) that fabricating a story may involve creating a narrative of the motivations of others to create a more believable story. Numerous researchers have noted that deceptive individuals often attempt to “fill in the gaps” in the story by providing motivations for the actions of others. Full scoring procedure and rationale can be found in Logue et al. (2015).
Logue et al. (2015) demonstrated that Reality Monitoring was a highly effective verbal deception detection method in conjunction with the CIS. The current study aims to determine whether psychopathic traits or social dominance may be related to success in defeating the Reality Monitoring scale. The predicted probability of success was calculated by correlating success in being deemed truthful by the Reality Monitoring scale and the aforementioned traits.
4.3 Results