Stanley Jennifer Tehan, Webster Britney A
Department of Psychology, University of Akron, Akron, OH, 44325-4301, USA.
Cogn Res Princ Implic. 2019 Jul 22;4(1):26. doi: 10.1186/s41235-019-0178-z.
In general, people are poor at detecting deception. Older adults are even worse than young adults at detecting deceit, which might make them uniquely vulnerable to certain types of financial fraud. One reason for poor deceit detection abilities is that lay theories of cues to deception are not valid. This study compared the effectiveness of two training methods to improve deceit detection among older adults: valid facial cues versus valid verbal cues to deception. Approximately 150 older adults were randomly assigned to facial training, verbal training, or a control condition. Participants completed a pre-test deceit detection task, their assigned training, and a post-test deceit detection task.
Both training groups significantly improved at recognizing their respectively trained cues after training. However, the facial cue training group were less accurate at detecting deception post-test compared to pre-test and the control group exhibited improved accuracy of deceit detection from pre-test to post-test.
These results are consistent with the body of literature on deception suggesting people hover around chance accuracy, even after training. Older adults' facial and verbal cue recognition can be improved with training, but these improvements did not translate into more accurate deceit detection, and actually hampered performance in the facial condition. Older adults showed the most benefit from sheer practice at detecting deception (in the control condition), perhaps because this condition encouraged implicit rather than explicit judgments of deception.
一般来说，人们在察觉欺骗方面能力欠佳。老年人在察觉欺骗方面比年轻人更差，这可能使他们特别容易受到某些类型的金融欺诈。欺骗察觉能力差的一个原因是，关于欺骗线索的外行理论是无效的。本研究比较了两种训练方法在提高老年人欺骗察觉能力方面的有效性：有效的面部线索与有效的言语线索。大约150名老年人被随机分配到面部训练组、言语训练组或对照组。参与者完成了一项欺骗察觉预测试任务、他们被分配的训练以及一项欺骗察觉后测试任务。
两个训练组在训练后识别各自训练的线索方面都有显著提高。然而，面部线索训练组在测试后的欺骗察觉准确性低于测试前，而对照组在从测试前到测试后的欺骗察觉准确性有所提高。
这些结果与关于欺骗的文献一致，表明即使经过训练，人们的准确性也只是接近随机水平。通过训练可以提高老年人对面部和言语线索的识别能力，但这些提高并没有转化为更准确的欺骗察觉，实际上还妨碍了面部条件下的表现。老年人从单纯的欺骗察觉练习（在对照组中）中受益最大，可能是因为这种条件鼓励对欺骗进行隐性而非显性的判断。
