Lie-biased Decision Making in Prison

Levine and McCornack (1992) found that persons who have a truth-bias (those who tend to believe that most messages are truthful) exhibit low detection accuracy, that moderately suspicious people are more accurate at detecting, and suggested that lie-bias persons would be as inaccurate at detecting lies as those who are truth-biased. This study tested Levine and McCornack's suggestion that lie-biased people would be inaccurate deception detectors by conducting field experiments in Kansas and New Mexico prisons. Results indicate that prisoners are lie-biased and are accurate detectors of lies but not truths, and findings suggest a reversed veracity effect in prison.