Cooperation of liars and truth tellers

Inbau, Reid, Buckley, and Jayne (2001) claim that liars are less cooperative than truth tellers, and that their denials sound less convincing. We have tested these claims in two experiments. In Experiment 1, participants lied or told the truth about an event they were involved in, and were subsequently accused of lying. Cooperation was measured as the willingness to repeat their description of what had happened during the event. Cooperation was not related to lying/truth telling but was correlated with the personality of the interviewee. The higher participants scored in terms of public self-consciousness, the less willing they were to cooperate. In Experiment 2, observers were exposed to the justifications the participants in Experiment 1 (both liars and truth tellers) gave for their refusal to repeat their stories. Amongst other points, results showed that the refusals of liars sounded more convincing than the refusals of truth tellers.

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