Effects of existential threat on the process of lie detection

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Simon Schindler
• Subject Area: Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology
• Term: from 2017 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 396875163

• Final Report Year: 2022

Final Report Abstract

In this project, we aimed at investigating effects of mortality salience (MS)––an existential threat––on the process of lie detection. Overall, our predictions based on the proposed theoretical model were not supported: none of the conducted studies showed any significant MS effects––neither on proximal reactions (classification accuracy of true and false messages) nor on distal reactions (credibility attribution, error weighing, judgmental biases). Instead, especially the three pre-registered studies on credibility attribution/worldview defense provided strict tests in the context of justification and thus, the resulting null effects led to questioning the general validity of fundamental TMT assumptions and the MS hypothesis. Corroborating this impression, our meta-analysis on the interaction effect between MS and social norm salience suggested the presence of publication bias and/or the exploitation of researcher degrees of freedom and arrived at substantially smaller effect size estimates for the hypothesized interaction, in several cases reducing the effect to nonsignificance. In sum, instead of providing informative insights about the effects of existential threat on the process of lie detection, this project revealed theoretical and methodological challenges when investigating proximal effects on lie detection accuracy and makes an important contribution by decreasing confidence in TMT and specifically in the MS hypothesis.

Publications

• Defending one's worldview under mortality salience: Testing the validity of an established idea. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 93, 104087.
  Schindler, Simon; Reinhardt, Nina & Reinhard, Marc-André
  
• Does Social Exclusion Improve Detection of Real and Fake Smiles? A Replication Study. Frontiers in Psychology, 12 (2021, 1, 28).
  Schindler, Simon & Trede, Martin
  
• Challenges in detecting proximal effects of existential threat on lie detection accuracy. Current Psychology, 42(25), 22114-22126.
  Schindler, Simon; Reinhardt, Nina & Reinhard, Marc-André
  
• Do Salient Social Norms Moderate Mortality Salience Effects? A (Challenging) Meta-Analysis of Terror Management Studies. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 27(2), 195-225.
  Schindler, Simon; Hilgard, Joe; Fritsche, Immo; Burke, Brian & Pfattheicher, Stefan