The residual effect of feigning: How intentional faking may evolve into a less conscious form of symptom reporting

Abstract

We conducted three studies that address the residual effects of instructed feigning of symptoms. In Experiment 1 (N = 31), undergraduates instructed to exaggerate symptoms on a malingering test continued to report more neurocognitive and psychiatric symptoms than did nonmalingering controls, when later asked to respond honestly to the same test. In Experiment 2 (N = 28), students completed a symptom list of psychiatric complaints and then were asked to explain why they had endorsed two target symptoms that they did not, in actuality, endorse. A total of 57% of participants did not detect this mismatch between actual and manipulated symptom endorsement and even tended to adopt the manipulated symptoms when provided with an opportunity to do so. In Experiment 3 (N = 28), we found that self-deceptive enhancement is related to the tendency to continue to report neurocognitive and psychiatric symptoms that initially had been produced intentionally. “Blindness” for the intentional aspect of symptom endorsement may explain the intrinsic overlap between feigning and somatoform complaints.

Keywords:

• Neuropsychological assessment
• Malingering
• Choice blindness
• Self-deception

We thank Petter Johansson, Lars Hall, and Steven Jay Lynn for their very helpful comments. We are grateful to Linda Kosel for running Experiment 3.

Notes

¹In total, 28 × 2 = 56 target items were manipulated. Of these, 8 (14%) concerned downgrading.

²In the “nonblind” subsample, there were no significant pre- to postmanipulation changes, across the control and target items, both t(11)s < 1.0.

³Participants also completed the SCL-90 (see Experiment 2) before feigning instructions were given, but these data are not discussed here.