Post‐probe decision making in a prison context

Abstract

If a listener becomes suspicious during a conversation, and asks questions (probes) of a speaker, the listener tends to judge the speaker's message as honest. This result has been termed the probing effect (McCornack, Levine, Aleman, Oetzel, & Miller, 1991). This study hypothesized that an untested decision‐making phenomenon, an opposite probing effect, or a post‐probe tendency to judge a message as deceptive, might occur when lie‐biased individuals judge statement veracity. Prison inmates and non‐inmates participated in dyads as judges and speakers. Speakers watched a video, and then lied or told the truth to judges. Judges covertly showed thumbs up or down before asking questions, and subsequently made post‐probe judgments. Findings indicate that inmates use heuristic processing to a greater extent than non‐inmates, and that inmates, surprisingly, exhibit a probing effect, and not an opposite probing effect, when heuristic processing is employed to decide message veracity.

Keywords:

• Probing effect
• Reversed probing effect
• Lie‐biased
• Deception
• Heuristics

Notes

Gary D. Bond, Daniel M. Malloy, Laura A. Thompson, Elizabeth A. Arias, and Shannon N. Nunn are all affiliated with New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM. This research was partially supported by a NIH NIGMS pilot grant (#S06M08136) and NIH MBRS‐RISE Grant GM61222‐04. The authors would like to extend their appreciation to the state Secretary of Corrections office in New Mexico for approvals to allow this research to be conducted. We would like to thank Tia Bland, Chief Public Information Officer, Santa Fe, NM; Warden Ron Snodgrass and Project Director Marlee Garza, New Mexico Women's Correctional Facility‐Corrections Corporation of America, Grants, NM; and Southern New Mexico Correctional Facility Warden Lawrence Tafoya and Warden of the SNMCF Paul Oliver Unit, Lupe Martinez‐Marshall, Las Cruces, NM. Correspondence to Gary D. Bond, Department of Psychology, Science Hall 311, MSC‐3452, P. O. Box 30001, Las Cruces, NM 88003‐0001. Email: [email protected].

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gary D. Bond

Gary D. Bond, Daniel M. Malloy, Laura A. Thompson, Elizabeth A. Arias, and Shannon N. Nunn are all affiliated with New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM. This research was partially supported by a NIH NIGMS pilot grant (#S06M08136) and NIH MBRS‐RISE Grant GM61222‐04. The authors would like to extend their appreciation to the state Secretary of Corrections office in New Mexico for approvals to allow this research to be conducted. We would like to thank Tia Bland, Chief Public Information Officer, Santa Fe, NM; Warden Ron Snodgrass and Project Director Marlee Garza, New Mexico Women's Correctional Facility‐Corrections Corporation of America, Grants, NM; and Southern New Mexico Correctional Facility Warden Lawrence Tafoya and Warden of the SNMCF Paul Oliver Unit, Lupe Martinez‐Marshall, Las Cruces, NM. Correspondence to Gary D. Bond, Department of Psychology, Science Hall 311, MSC‐3452, P. O. Box 30001, Las Cruces, NM 88003‐0001. Email: [email protected].