Calderon Sofia, Mac Giolla Erik, Granhag Pär Anders, Ask Karl
Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden.
Norwegian Police University College, Oslo, Norway.
Front Psychol. 2017 Nov 21;8:2037. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02037. eCollection 2017.
The aim was to examine how people mentally represent alleged future actions-their and intentions. In two experiments, participants were asked to either tell the truth (i.e., express true intentions) or lie (i.e., express false intentions) about performing future tasks. Drawing on Construal Level Theory, which proposes that psychologically distant events are more abstractly construed than proximal ones, it was predicted that liars would have more abstract mental representations of the future tasks than truth tellers, due to differences in hypotheticality (i.e., the likelihood of the future tasks occurring). Construal level was measured by a video segmentation task (Experiment 1, = 125) and preference for abstract or concrete descriptions of tasks (Experiment 2, = 59). Veracity had no effect on construal level. Speaking against our initial predictions, the data indicate that true and false intentions are construed at similar levels of abstraction. The results are discussed in the light of Construal Level Theory and the emerging psycho-legal research on true and false intentions.
目的是研究人们如何在心理上表征所谓的未来行动——他们的计划和意图。在两项实验中，参与者被要求就执行未来任务说出真话（即表达真实意图）或说谎（即表达虚假意图）。借鉴解释水平理论，该理论提出心理上遥远的事件比接近的事件更抽象地被解释，研究预测，由于假设性的差异（即未来任务发生的可能性），说谎者对未来任务的心理表征会比说真话者更抽象。解释水平通过视频分割任务来衡量（实验1，n = 125）以及对任务抽象或具体描述的偏好（实验2，n = 59）。真实性对解释水平没有影响。与我们最初的预测相反，数据表明真实意图和虚假意图在相似的抽象水平上被解释。将根据解释水平理论以及关于真实和虚假意图的新兴心理法学研究来讨论这些结果。
