Behind Bars and Lies: Personality, Lying and Deception Detection in Prison

• In Event: Individual differences in personality and deceptive conduct predisposing to criminal behavior and recidivism

Abstract

Deception is a nuanced form of manipulation employed to mislead others through the conveyance of false or truthful information. The majority of deception research has been conducted within community settings, where participants generally exhibit modest abilities in discerning truths from lies. In such contexts, deception often serves a pro-social function, fostering social bonding. In contrast, the prison environment remains under-investigated, and preliminary research shows that it is marked by elevated risks of self-serving deception, alongside prevalent traits like alexithymia, aggression, and dark personality traits, which make self-interested deception more prevalent.
This study aims to address this issue and explore deception production and detection among prisoners (N = 90; 30% women), focusing on their abilities in real social interactions. We employed a modified version of the Game of DeceIT (Wright et al., 2012) and analysed the results using the Signal Detection Theory to assess deception production and detection performance. Preliminary findings did not support the anticipated significant correlation between prisoners' proficiency in producing successful lies and truths (d' Sender) and accurately distinguishing between lies and truths produced by other prisoners (d' Receiver). Replicating previous findings in the literature on community samples, participants did not demonstrate superior performance over chance, neither in deception detection nor in its production credibility.
However, individual differences in other dimensions were found to play a significant role: older age, exposure to childhood violence, heightened physical aggression, alexithymia, and difficulties in identifying and describing feelings correlated with lower deception detection accuracy. In terms of deception production, inmates reporting high levels of Greed and Conscientiousness were perceived as more credible by their peers, regardless of statement veracity. Additionally, those adopting a lie-biased detection strategy were considered less credible by other participants. Implications for the psychological predictors of criminal behaviours are discussed.

Authors

• Andreea Turi, Research in Individual Differences and Legal Psychology (RIDDLE) Lab, Department of Psychology, Babeș-Bolyai University, Romania & Gherla Penitentiary, Gherla, Romania

• Mircea Zloteanu, Kingston University London

• Daria Mihaela Solescu, Universitatea Babes Bolyai

• Laura Visu-Petra, RIDDLE Lab, Department of Psychology, Babes-Bolyai University