Karen U. Millar

Deceptive Behavior in Social Relationships: A Consequence of Violated Expectations

Abstract Deceptive behavior is viewed as a mechanism by which a threat to the maintenance of a social relationship is temporarily resolved. In this study, we investigated two social relationships: parent-child and employer-employee. Eighty American students evaluated 32 behaviors from the perspective of a son or daughter and from the perspective of an employee. The students made judgments regarding the extent to which the employer and the parent expected them to avoid engaging in certain behaviors, and the extent to which they would lie about involvement in each behavior. Students also indicated how guilty they would feel about lying. Results indicated that the students used deception when their behavior violated the perceived expectancy of their role partner. The students experienced guilt, however, only with a violation of their own expectations, their role partners expectations, and a match between their own and their role partners expectations.

The Effects of Cognitive Capacity and Suspicion on Truth Bias

This study investigated the effects of cognitive capacity and suspicion on veracity judgments. It was hypothesized that under low suspicion conditions, truth bias would be more pronounced when participants had low cognitive capacity than when participants had high cognitive capacity. One hundred and seven participants viewed presentations of people either truthfully or deceptively describing a series of pictures. Prior to the presentations, a short description designed to increase suspicion was read to half the participants. Participants viewed half of the presentations while working on arithmetic problems (low capacity) and the other half while not working on arithmetic problems (high capacity). Following each presentation, the participants were required to evaluate the communicators performance on a number of scales and indicate whether the communicator was actually describing the picture. The results partially supported the hypothesis.

On the Perceived Functions of Movies

ABSTRACT The present study examined perceptions of the functions of movie attendance. One hundred American college students completed a questionnaire designed to examine their reasons for going to movies and for their enjoyment of them. In addition, each student grouped recent movie titles into categories containing movies perceived to have something in common and indicated their preference for each group created. Factor analysis revealed three general types of moviegoers, each type perceiving movie attendance as serving a different function: (a) the individual who attended movies as a means of self-escape, (b) the individual who attended as a means of self-development and, (c) the individual who attended purely for the entertainment value of the movie. These factors were systematically related to movie preference (e.g., those who attended as a means of escape preferred movies with an air of unreality). The present results have implications for why people go to movies and the functions that movies may hol...

The effects of a threatening life event on behavior sequences and intrusive thought: A self-disruption explanation

A model is presented to explain the occurrence of intrusive thought subsequent to threatening life experiences. The self hypothesized to be partly composed of a number of behavior sequences representing important aspects of the self. Threatening life events disrupt the self by interrupting one or more of these sequences. This interruption is threatening to the self because it creates an incompleteness. To the extent that no instrumental means is available to complete the self, an attempt is made to symbolically complete the self through rumination. Severty-six female freshmen, in their first few weeks of college, provided information about activities performed with a close person and a nonclose person at home, as well as the extent to which these activities were continued at school. Using a modified version of Horowitzs (1976) Impact of Event Scale, a number of hypotheses were tested regarding the occurrence of intrusive thought and emotion. The more activities performed with a close person at home, the more intrusive thought subsequent to behavioral sequence interruption. However, if behavior sequences were continued by instrumental means, less intrusive thought occurred about the close person. Results have implications for lessening the impact of a threatening life experience.

Detection of deception in familiar and unfamiliar persons: The effects of information restriction

The present paper investigated the effects of the familiarity between the detector and deceiver and the amount of information available on the detection of deception. It was hypothesized that limiting the amount of information available to the lie detector would increase detection accuracy when the deceiver was familiar and, alternatively, would decrease accuracy when the deceiver was unfamiliar. In Study 1, participants attempted to detect the deceptions of familiar and unfamiliar persons with and without visual cues. The results supported the hypothesis. The deceptions of familiar persons were more likely to be detected when visual cues were withheld and the deceptions of strangers were more likely to be detected when visual cues were not withheld. In Study 2 procedures similar to Study 1 were used. However, in Study 2 the presence or absence of auditory cues was manipulated instead of manipulating the presence or absence of visual cues. The results of Study 2 replicated those of Study 1.

The effects of suspicion on the recall of cues used to make veracity judgments

The present study investigated the effects of suspicion on the recall of cues used to make veracity judgments. It was hypothesized that more noncontent cues would be attended to by suspicious individuals than nonsuspicious individuals. One hundred thirteen participants viewed videotapes of persons describing their work history truthfully or deceitfully under high and low suspiciousness conditions. Following the videotapes, the participants were asked to indicate whether the applicant had held the job and produced a written explanation for their judgments. When these statements were content analyzed for types of deception cues, the results supported the hypothesis.