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Fantasy proneness as a confounder of verbal lie detection tools
Author(s) -
SchellemanOffermans Karen,
Merckelbach Harald
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
journal of investigative psychology and offender profiling
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.479
H-Index - 22
eISSN - 1544-4767
pISSN - 1544-4759
DOI - 10.1002/jip.121
Subject(s) - fantasy , psychology , lie detection , storytelling , deception , trait , social psychology , developmental psychology , narrative , literature , art , computer science , programming language
This study investigated whether high fantasy‐prone individuals have superior storytelling abilities. It also explored whether this trait is related to specific linguistic features (i.e. self‐references, cognitive complexity, and emotional words). Participants high (n = 30) and low (n = 30) on a fantasy proneness scale were instructed to write down a true and a fabricated story about an aversive situation in which they had been the victim. Stories were then examined using two verbal lie detection approaches: criteria‐based content analysis (CBCA) and linguistic inquiry and word count (LIWC). Irrespective of the truth status of the stories, independent observers rated stories of high fantasy‐prone individuals as being richer in all nine CBCA elements than those of low fantasy‐prone individuals. Furthermore, overall, high fantasy‐prone people used more self‐references in their stories compared with low fantasy‐prone individuals. High fantasy prones' fabricated stories scored higher on various truth indices than authentic stories of low fantasy prones. Thus, high fantasy‐prone people are good in creating a sense of authenticity, even when they fabricate stories. Forensic experts should bear this in mind when they employ verbal lie detection tools. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.