Do Not Think Carefully? Re-examining the Effect of Unconscious Thought on Deception Detection

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Song Wu¹  Jiali Yan¹ 

[1] College of Psychology and Sociology, Shenzhen University

关键词: unconscious thought;    conscious thought;    deception detection;    verbal cues;    non-verbal cues;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00893

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Several recent studies have examined the effect of unconscious thinking on deception detection with the hypothesis that unconscious thought increases the ability to discriminate between truth and deception, but these studies yielded conflicting results. The present study aimed to re-examine the effect of unconscious thinking and extend it by adopting both verbal and non-verbal/paraverbal stimuli. We hypothesized that unconscious thought leads to a higher accuracy rate than immediate decision and conscious thought when judging non-verbal/paraverbal stimuli, but not when judging verbal stimuli. In Study 1, we compared unconscious thought with immediate decision by using both video and audio stimuli. In Study 2, we compared unconscious thought with conscious thought by using both video and text stimuli. The results showed that when detecting deception vs. truth, (1) unconscious thought was not better than immediate decision on deception detection in both audio and video conditions (Study 1), and (2) unconscious thought was not better than conscious thought in both video and text conditions (Study 2). The Bayes factor of both studies also showed substantial evidence for null hypothesis (H0) relative to alternative hypothesis (H1). The implications and limitations of the present study are discussed.

【 授权许可】

CC BY