Replication studies in the Netherlands: Lessons learned and recommendations for funders, publishers and editors, and universities.

Drawing on our experiences conducting replications we describe the lessons we learned about replication studies and formulate recommendations for researchers, policy makers, and funders about the role of replication in science and how it should be supported and funded. We first identify a variety of benefits of doing replication studies. Next, we argue that it is often necessary to improve aspects of the original study, even if that means deviating from the original protocol. Thirdly, we argue that replication studies highlight the importance of and need for more transparency of the research process, but also make clear how difficult that is. Fourthly, we underline that it is worth trying out replication in the humanities. We finish by formulating recommendations regarding reproduction and replication research, aimed specifically at funders, editors and publishers, and universities and other research institutes.

The use-the-best heuristic facilitates deception detection.

Decades of research have shown that people are poor at detecting deception. Understandably, people struggle with integrating the many putative cues to deception into an accurate veracity judgement. Heuristics simplify difficult decisions by ignoring most of the information and relying instead only on the most diagnostic cues. Here we conducted nine studies in which people evaluated honest and deceptive handwritten statements, video transcripts, videotaped interviews or live interviews. Participants performed at the chance level when they made intuitive judgements, free to use any possible cue. But when instructed to rely only on the best available cue (detailedness), they were consistently able to discriminate lies from truths. Our findings challenge the notion that people lack the potential to detect deception. The simplicity and accuracy of the use-the-best heuristic provides a promising new avenue for deception research.

A within-statement baseline comparison for detecting lies.

To make veracity judgements in individual cases, practitioners may rely on baselining. That is, they may evaluate a statement relative to a baseline statement that is known to be truthful. We investigated whether a within-statement verbal baseline comparison could enhance discriminatory accuracy. Participants (n = 148) read an alibi statement of a mock suspect and provided a veracity judgement regarding a critical two-hour period within the alibi statement. This critical element was either deceptive or truthful and was embedded into an otherwise truthful story. Half of the participants received additional instructions to use the surrounding truthful elements of the statement as a baseline. Instructing participants to make a within-statement baseline comparison did not improve the accuracy of credibility assessments.

Detainee and layperson's expectations and preferences regarding police interview rooms.

Emerging research on how suspects perceive the physical environment during investigative interviews yields contrasting findings. While previous studies have suggested that a room made to be physically comfortable may be optimal for interviewing suspects, another study found it can instead lead to higher suspicion of the investigator's intentions. The current study examined current detainees' and general population participants' beliefs about a room that resembled a "typical" interview room, and one decorated to be warm, inviting, and comfortable. Participants also provided descriptive information about their perceptions of police interview environments (e.g., preferences, expectations). We hypothesized that the decorated room would elicit higher ratings of suspicion and wariness compared to the "typical" room. Our findings showed that, overall, participants expected to be interviewed in the "typical" room but preferred the decorated one. Contrary to our expectations, they rated the "typical" room higher on feelings of suspicion than the decorated room. The decorated room also corresponded with what participants reported to be an environment that promotes disclosure. These results bode well for conducting investigative interviews in comfortable environments.

Does Honesty Require Time? Two Preregistered Direct Replications of Experiment 2 of Shalvi, Eldar, and Bereby-Meyer (2012).

Shalvi, Eldar, and Bereby-Meyer (2012) found across two studies (N = 72 for each) that time pressure increased cheating. These findings suggest that dishonesty comes naturally, whereas honesty requires overcoming the initial tendency to cheat. Although the study's results were statistically significant, a Bayesian reanalysis indicates that they had low evidential strength. In a direct replication attempt of Shalvi et al.'s Experiment 2, we found that time pressure did not increase cheating, N = 428, point biserial correlation (rpb) = .05, Bayes factor (BF)01 = 16.06. One important deviation from the original procedure, however, was the use of mass testing. In a second direct replication with small groups of participants, we found that time pressure also did not increase cheating, N = 297, rpb = .03, BF01 = 9.59. These findings indicate that the original study may have overestimated the true effect of time pressure on cheating and the generality of the effect beyond the original context.

Detecting false intentions using unanticipated questions.

The present study investigated whether measurable verbal differences occur when people vocalize their true and false intentions. To test potential differences, we used an experimental set-up where liars planned a criminal act (i.e., installing a virus on a network computer) and truth-tellers a non-criminal act (i.e., installing a new presentation program "SlideDog" on a network computer). Before they could carry out these acts, a confederate intercepted the participant and interviewed them about their intentions and the planning phase by using both anticipated and unanticipated questions. Liars used a cover story to mask their criminal intentions while truth-tellers told the entire truth. In contrast to our hypotheses, both human and automated coding did not show any evidence that liars and truth-tellers differed in plausibility or detailedness. Furthermore, results showed that asking unanticipated questions resulted in lengthier answers than anticipated questions. These results are in line with the mixed findings in the intention literature and suggest that plausibility and detailedness are less diagnostic cues for deception about intentions.

Lie prevalence, lie characteristics and strategies of self-reported good liars.

Meta-analytic findings indicate that the success of unmasking a deceptive interaction relies more on the performance of the liar than on that of the lie detector. Despite this finding, the lie characteristics and strategies of deception that enable good liars to evade detection are largely unknown. We conducted a survey (n = 194) to explore the association between laypeople's self-reported ability to deceive on the one hand, and their lie prevalence, characteristics, and deception strategies in daily life on the other. Higher self-reported ratings of deception ability were positively correlated with self-reports of telling more lies per day, telling inconsequential lies, lying to colleagues and friends, and communicating lies via face-to-face interactions. We also observed that self-reported good liars highly relied on verbal strategies of deception and they most commonly reported to i) embed their lies into truthful information, ii) keep the statement clear and simple, and iii) provide a plausible account. This study provides a starting point for future research exploring the meta-cognitions and patterns of skilled liars who may be most likely to evade detection.

Eliciting Response Bias Within Forced Choice Tests to Detect Random Responders.

The Forced Choice Test (FCT) can be used to detect malingered loss of memory or sensory deficits. In this test, examinees are presented with two stimuli, one correct and one incorrect, in regards to a specific event or a perceptual discrimination task. The task is to select the correct answer alternative, or guess if it is unknown. Genuine impairment is associated with test scores that fall within chance performance. In contrast, malingered impairment is associated with purposeful avoidance of correct information, resulting in below chance performance. However, a substantial proportion of malingerers intentionally randomize their responses, and are missed by the test. Here we examine whether a 'runs test' and a 'within test response 'bias' have diagnostic value to detect this intentional randomization. We instructed 73 examinees to malinger red/green blindness and subjected them to a FCT. For half of the examinees we manipulated the ambiguity between answer alternatives over the test trials in order to elicit a response bias. Compared to a sample of 10,000 cases of computer generated genuine performance, the runs test and response bias both detected malingered performance better than chance.

Memory detection: The effects of emotional stimuli.

The Concealed Information Test (CIT) aims to detect the presence of crime-related information in memory. In two experiments, we examined the influence of stimulus emotionality on the outcomes of the CIT. In experiment 1, each participant was tested immediately or after one week, on a series of neutral and either negative arousing or negative non-arousing pictures. CIT detection efficiency was unaffected, but physiological and recognition data did not support the manipulation's effectiveness. In experiment 2, each participant was tested after a week on a series of neutral versus negative arousing pictures. Importantly, stimulus arousal was increased and memory ceiling effects were prevented. This time, both memory and CIT detection efficiency using the skin conductance, but not the respiration and heart rate measures, were enhanced for emotional compared to neutral pictures. Taken together, these results indicate that the use of emotional stimuli does not deteriorate and may even improve CIT validity.

The Malevolent Side of Human Nature.

The term dark triad refers to the constellation of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Over the past few years, the concept has gained momentum, with many researchers assuming that the dark triad is a prominent antecedent of transgressive and norm-violating behavior. Our purpose in this meta-analytic review was to evaluate (a) interrelations among narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy; (b) gender differences in these traits; (c) how these traits are linked to normal personality factors; and (d) the psychosocial correlates of the dark triad. Our findings show that dark triad traits are substantially intercorrelated, somewhat more prevalent among men than women, predominantly related to the Big Five personality factor of agreeableness and the HEXACO factor of honesty-humility, and generally associated with various types of negative psychosocial outcomes. We question whether dark triad traits are sufficiently distinct and argue that the way they are currently measured is too simple to capture the malevolent sides of personality. Because most research in this domain is cross-sectional and based on self-reports, we recommend using a cross-informant approach and prospective, longitudinal research designs for studying the predictive value of dark triad features.

Unraveling the roles of orienting and inhibition in the Concealed Information Test.

The Concealed Information Test (CIT) is a well-validated tool for physiological and behavioral detection of concealed knowledge. Two distinct theoretical frameworks have been proposed to explain the differential responses to the concealed critical items: orienting response theory versus arousal inhibition theory. klein Selle, Verschuere, Kindt, Meijer, and Ben-Shakhar (2016), however, argued for a response fractionation model and showed that, while the skin conductance reflects pure orienting, both the respiratory and heart rate measures reflect arousal inhibition. The present study intends to (1) provide a constructive replication of klein Selle et al. (2016) using the autobiographical CIT, and (2) extend their work by testing an additional prediction derived from orienting theory, using an item-salience manipulation. One hundred and nine participants were tested on four high salient and four low salient identity items. Half of the participants were motivated to hide their identity (orienting + arousal inhibition), while the other half were motivated to reveal their identity (orienting only). Confirming earlier findings, the results revealed a fractionation between the different measures: while the skin conductance response (SCR) increased to a similar extent in the two motivational conditions, the respiration line length (RLL) shortened and the heart rate (HR) decelerated solely in the conceal condition. Moreover, while the SCR was larger for high than for low salient critical items, the RLL and HR responses were similar for these two item types. These data led us to conclude that, in the CIT, the skin conductance measure reflects orienting and the respiratory and heart rate measures reflect arousal inhibition.

Bootstrapping the P300 in diagnostic psychophysiology: How many iterations are needed?

In psychophysiological research, bootstrapping procedures are often used to classify individual participants. How many iterations are required for a reliable bootstrap test is not universally agreed upon. To investigate the number of iterations needed for a stable bootstrap estimate, we reanalyzed P300 data collected in concealed information test paradigms. We also distinguished between the bootstrap and permutations approaches. We compared results in several studies using 100 versus 1,000 versus 10,000 iterations in the bootstrap, and we concluded that 100 iterations were adequate as results from all three iteration numbers correlated highly.

Strong, but Wrong: Lay People's and Police Officers' Beliefs about Verbal and Nonverbal Cues to Deception.

The present study investigated the beliefs of students and police officers about cues to deception. A total of 95 police officers and 104 undergraduate students filled out a questionnaire addressing beliefs about cues to deception. Twenty-eight verbal cues were included in the questionnaire, all extracted from verbal credibility assessment tools (i.e., CBCA, RM, and SCAN). We investigated to what extent beliefs about nonverbal and verbal cues of deception differed between lay people (students) and police officers, and whether these beliefs were in agreement with objective cues known from research. Both students and police officers believed the usual stereotypical, but non-diagnostic (nonverbal) cues such as gaze aversion and increased movement to be indicative of deception. Yet, participants were less inclined to overestimate the relationship between verbal cues and deception and their beliefs fitted better with what we know from research. The implications of these findings for practice are discussed.

Scientific Content Analysis (SCAN) Cannot Distinguish Between Truthful and Fabricated Accounts of a Negative Event.

The Scientific Content Analysis (SCAN) is a verbal veracity assessment method that is currently used worldwide by investigative authorities. Yet, research investigating the accuracy of SCAN is scarce. The present study tested whether SCAN was able to accurately discriminate between true and fabricated statements. To this end, 117 participants were asked to write down one true and one fabricated statement about a recent negative event that happened in their lives. All statements were analyzed using 11 criteria derived from SCAN. Results indicated that SCAN was not able to correctly classify true and fabricated statements. Lacking empirical support, the application of SCAN in its current form should be discouraged.

The Mask of Sanity: Facial Expressive, Self-Reported, and Physiological Consequences of Emotion Regulation in Psychopathic Offenders.

This study investigated the physiological, self-reported, and facial correlates of emotion regulation in psychopathy. Specifically, we compared psychopathic offenders (n = 42), nonpsychopathic offenders (n = 42), and nonoffender controls (n = 26) in their ability to inhibit and express emotion while watching affective films (fear, happy, and sad). Results showed that all participants were capable of drastically diminishing facial emotions under inhibition instructions. Contrary to expectation, psychopaths were not superior in adopting such a "poker face." Further, the inhibition of emotion was associated with cardiovascular changes, an effect that was also not dependent on psychopathy (or its factors), suggesting emotion inhibition to be an effortful process in psychopaths as well. Interestingly, psychopathic offenders did not differ from nonpsychopaths in the capacity to show content-appropriate facial emotions during the expression condition. Taken together, these data challenge the view that psychopathy is associated with either superior emotional inhibitory capacities or a generalized impairment in showing facial affect.

Deception detection with behavioral, autonomic, and neural measures: Conceptual and methodological considerations that warrant modesty.

The detection of deception has attracted increased attention among psychological researchers, legal scholars, and ethicists during the last decade. Much of this has been driven by the possibility of using neuroimaging techniques for lie detection. Yet, neuroimaging studies addressing deception detection are clouded by lack of conceptual clarity and a host of methodological problems that are not unique to neuroimaging. We review the various research paradigms and the dependent measures that have been adopted to study deception and its detection. In doing so, we differentiate between basic research designed to shed light on the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying deceptive behavior and applied research aimed at detecting lies. We also stress the distinction between paradigms attempting to detect deception directly and those attempting to establish involvement by detecting crime-related knowledge, and discuss the methodological difficulties and threats to validity associated with each paradigm. Our conclusion is that the main challenge of future research is to find paradigms that can isolate cognitive factors associated with deception, rather than the discovery of a unique (brain) correlate of lying. We argue that the Comparison Question Test currently applied in many countries has weak scientific validity, which cannot be remedied by using neuroimaging measures. Other paradigms are promising, but the absence of data from ecologically valid studies poses a challenge for legal admissibility of their outcomes.

Orienting versus inhibition in the Concealed Information Test: Different cognitive processes drive different physiological measures.

The Concealed Information Test (CIT) provides a valid tool for psychophysiological detection of concealed knowledge. However, its precise theoretical underpinnings remain a matter of debate. The differential physiological responses elicited by concealed, relevant items, relative to control items, were traditionally explained as reflecting an orienting response (OR). According to an alternative account, these responses reflect attempts to inhibit arousal. The present study examined whether and to what extent CIT detection efficiency is affected by instructions aimed at manipulating arousal inhibition (AI). One hundred and forty-eight undergraduate students completed a CIT, while electrodermal, cardiac, and respiratory measures were recorded. Half of the participants were requested to imagine that they are suspected of committing a crime and were motivated to avoid detection (presumably eliciting both OR and AI), while the other half were requested to imagine that they are witnesses of a crime and were motivated to be detected (presumably eliciting OR only). All participants were further requested to remain silent throughout the test. In both conditions, concealed items led to a similar increase in skin conductance as compared to the control items. However, the typically observed heart rate deceleration and respiratory suppression were found in suspects, but not in witnesses. These data imply that different mechanisms drive the responding of different psychophysiological measures used in the CIT, with skin conductance reflecting OR, and heart rate and respiration primarily reflecting AI.

When deception becomes easy: the effects of task switching and goal neglect on the truth proportion effect.

Lying is typically more cognitively demanding than truth telling. Yet, recent cognitive models of lying propose that lying can be just as easy as truth telling, depending on contextual factors. In line with this idea, research has shown that the cognitive cost of deception decreases when people frequently respond deceptively, while it increases when people rarely respond deceptively (i.e., the truth proportion effect). In the present study, we investigated two possible underlying mechanisms of the truth proportion effect. In Experiment 1 (N = 121), we controlled for the impact of switch costs by keeping the number of switches between deceptive and truthful responses constant. We found that people who often responded deceptively made fewer errors when responding deceptively than people who only occasionally responded deceptively, replicating the truth proportion effect. Thus, while the truth proportion effect in earlier studies may be partially driven by the cost of switching between truthful and deceptive responses, we still found evidence for the truth proportion effect while controlling for switch costs. In Experiment 2 (N = 68), we assessed whether the truth proportion effect is influenced by goal neglect. According to this view, the truth proportion effect should be reduced if participants are cued to maintain the task goals, while it should be larger when participants are allowed to neglect the task goals. In line with this hypothesis, we found a smaller truth proportion effect when participants were cued with the task goals compared to when they were not cued. This study shows that the truth proportion effect is influenced by goal neglect, implying that frequent deceptive responding strengthens the goal of responding deceptively. Our findings imply that the accuracy of lie detection tests could be increased by using a majority of truth-items (i.e., induce the truth proportion effect), and that the truth proportion effect should be maximized by (1) increasing the number of truth-lie task switches and (2) inducing goal neglect.

The role of frontal EEG asymmetry in post-traumatic stress disorder.

Frontal alpha asymmetry, a biomarker derived from electroencephalography (EEG) recordings, has often been associated with psychological adjustment, with more left-sided frontal activity predicting approach motivation and lower levels of depression and anxiety. This suggests high relevance to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a disorder comprising anxiety and dysphoria symptoms. We review this relationship and show that frontal asymmetry can be plausibly linked to neuropsychological abnormalities seen in PTSD. However, surprisingly few studies (k = 8) have directly addressed frontal asymmetry in PTSD, mostly reporting that trait frontal asymmetry has little (if any) predictive value. Meanwhile, preliminary evidence suggest that state-dependent asymmetry during trauma-relevant stimulation distinguishes PTSD patients from resilient individuals. Thus, exploring links between provocation-induced EEG asymmetry and PTSD appears particularly promising. Additionally, we recommend more fine-grained analyses into PTSD symptom clusters in relation to frontal asymmetry. Finally, we highlight hypotheses that may guide future research and help to fully apprehend the practical and theoretical relevance of this biological marker.