Efeitos de contingências aversivas sobre o comportamento de mentir: sinais e detecção

Abstract

As a subdomain in the study of deception, lie detection deals with the investigation of variables that control changes on the behavior of senders while they tell lies (deception cues), and with the conditions under which detectors are capable of correctly identifying such cues. The present study investigated the effect of punishment of lying on deception cues, and assessed the judgment of detectors about these senders speeches. In Study 1, ten undergraduate students took the role of salespeople in a used mobile phone store, and had to convince the clients (confederates) to buy those phones. In some of the trials they had to sell known phones (truth condition) and, at others, unknown phones (lie condition) according to previous training. Punishment was configured by the complaint from a deceived client after the purchase of a phone sold in a lie trial. The categorization of these participants behavior didn t show any significant differences between honest and deceptive messages, and didn t reveal punishment effects. In Study 2, 181 participants made judgments about the messages from Study 1 s senders in one of two detection conditions. In the Direct Detection condition, they made dichotomic judgments rating each message as a truth or a lie. In the Indirect Detection condition, they rated the senders behavior in three scales. Data from Study 2 showed that detectors were able to distinguish truths from lies in both conditions, although they did not differentially judge prepunishment from post-punishment messages. Results were discussed considering methodological issues on the creation of scenarios for the investigation of lying behavior, and the need for configuration adjustments for the punishing event was raised for a clearer establishment of relations between deception cues and aversive contingencies.