THE EFFECTS OF COGNITIVE CAPACITY AND SUSPICION ON TRUTH BIAS

This study investigated the effects of cognitive capacity and suspicio n 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 capac ity. One hundred and seven participants viewed presentations of people either truthfully or deceptively describing a series of pictures. Pri or to the presentations, a short description designed to increase susp icion was read to half the participants. Participants viewed half of t he presentations while working on arithmetic problems (low capacity) a nd the other half while not working on arithmetic problems (high capac ity). Following each presentation, the participants were required to e valuate the communicator's performance on a number of scales and indic ate whether the communicator was actually describing the picture. The results partially supported the hypothesis.