Conceal, don't feel, don't let it show: intentional versus instructed cheating in the Concealed Information Test

The validity of the CIT has been demonstrated in hundreds of laboratory studies. Most studies, however, lack key ingredients of real‐life deception. One such factor is self‐initiated deception; in contrast to perpetrators committing real crimes, research participants are typically instructed to commit a mock crime and deny involvement. Yet, the intention to deceive is a crucial factor when studying deception. Self‐initiated cheating might increase both motivation to avoid detection and the significance of the crime‐relevant items in the CIT, which could result in more obvious differences between guilty and innocent individuals. Hence, while laboratory research is important for establishing a controlled environment in which particular variables can be disentangled, it has a limited external validity to the field. This disparity between research and practice may affect the generalizability of laboratory based CIT findings. Participants in the experimental condition were provided with the opportunity to cheat on a trivia quiz for an incentive, yet without explicit instructions to do so. Participants in the control (instructed) condition were explicitly asked to cheat on the quiz. Using a psychophysiological CIT, participants’ recognition memory for the answers to the critical questions was assessed. Does externally valid deception result in increased detection efficiency of the CIT compared to instructed cheating?