Self-referencing differently undermines detection of personal vs. ideological deception

Seminal studies show that inconsistency between detectors and deceivers, in ideological opinion on controversial topics, impairs lie detection. In the forensic field, however, deceptions refer more to personal experience, than ideological opinions. To directly test the impact of agreement for personally vs. ideologically justified opinions as a modulator of accuracy in detecting deception, forty-eight statements (half true) were recorded in videos, and randomly administered in Experiment 1 to 102 participants (56 females). Each statement reported an opinion (agree vs. disagree) and its justification (personal vs. ideological). In Experiment 2 (ongoing), each video is divided and presented in two parts (opinion and justification). Participants (n = 120) are assessed for the base rate of their ability to detect deception, assigned to a sequential vs. random order of exposure to the videos, and asked to judge each stimulus as truthful vs. deceitful. While self-referential processes were shown to impair the detection of ideological lies, in Experiment 1 we show that the e;ect of self-referential processes extends to personally justified lies, and opinion content (agree vs. disagree) specifically predict the detection accuracy for personal vs. ideological account. In Experiment 2, we expect the random order of presentation to improve performance in the inconsistent situations. The study reveals the complex, non-univocal role of self-referencing in detecting deception.