A Study Of The Psychological Mechanisms By Which Socioeconomic Status Influences Lie Detection

Lying is extremely common in life,and lie detection is very challenging for people.Numerous studies have found that people are only slightly above the random level of accuracy in lie detection,at around 54%.Lie detection is influenced not only by the lying cues divulged by the target,but also by the target’s characteristics,such as physical appearance(trustworthiness,attractiveness)and social categorization(race,gender,party affiliation and socioeconomic status).A recent study found that the target’s socioeconomic status leads to response bias in lie detection.However,the psychological mechanisms need to be further explored.In this study,two experiments were conducted to investigate the psychological mechanisms by which socioeconomic status influences lie detection using the Lie Detection Test and the Socioeconomic Status Implicit Association Test.Sixteen video recordings based on the ’mock crime paradigm’ were used,which included both high and low socioeconomic status targets,and counterbalanced in gender(male and female),truthfulness(telling the truth,lying)and socioeconomic status(high and low).Experiment 1 examined the effect of target object and identifier’s socioeconomic status on lie detection under the nonverbal visual channel,and the mechanism of stereotype.Results found that: there was no significant response bias for either low or high socioeconomic status targets(ps > 0.05);subjects’ socioeconomic status stereotypes were significantly positively correlated with and positively predicted subjects’ judgement criteria(ps < 0.05).Experiment 2 based on Experiment 1 by priming subjects’ social categorization of the target’s socioeconomic status and considering the target’s face trustworthiness and attractiveness to examine the mechanism by which socioeconomic status influences lie detection.The results found that: there was no significant response bias(ps > 0.05)among subjects for either low or high socioeconomic status target subjects,and the influence of target subjects’ socioeconomic status on subjects’ judgement criteria was realized through a chain-mediated effect as follows: target subjects’ socioeconomic status → attractiveness → trustworthiness → judgement criteria.Based on the results of the two experiments,the following conclusions can be drawn:(1)People’s stereotypes of groups with different socioeconomic status can predict people’s judgment criteria in lie detection.(2)In social classification priming condition,the perceived differences in attractiveness and credibility of the target audience of different socioeconomic status affect people’s judgment criteria in lie detection.