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Lies, truths, and attachment orientations in late adolescence
Personality and Individual Differences 52 (2012) 670–673
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Personality and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid
Lies, truths, and attachment orientations in late adolescence Eitan Elaad ⇑, Shiri Lavy, Diana Cohenca, Ester Berholz, Pnina Thee, Yaara Ben-Gigi Ariel University Center, Ariel 40700, Israel
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 26 May 2011 Received in revised form 28 November 2011 Accepted 14 December 2011 Available online 14 January 2012 Keywords: Lies Truths Lie-detection Truth-telling Attachment Biases
a b s t r a c t In this paper we examine the association between adolescents’ attachment orientations and their perceived abilities to tell and detect lies and truths. The 121 adolescents who participated in this study (a) self-assessed their abilities to tell and detect lies and truths and (b) completed a measure of attachment orientations (ECR). Results indicated that participants overestimated their truth-related abilities (i.e., truth telling and truth detecting) and their lie detection abilities, but not their lie-telling abilities. Attachment anxiety predicted poor subjective abilities related to lies (i.e., telling and detecting lies) and poor subjective abilities related to delivering messages (i.e., telling lies and truths). Attachment avoidance predicted low self-ratings of truth-telling abilities. This is the first study to link insecure attachment orientations with perceived abilities to tell and detect lies and truths, and the first to link avoidance to lack of self-confidence in delivering truthful messages. The implications of these findings for interpersonal relationships, criminal interrogation, and court litigations are discussed. Suggestions for future studies examining broader implications of the results are offered. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Bond and DePaulo (2008) conclude that people differ little from one another in their ability to detect lies. Their report implies that most people’s unbiased self-assessment of lie and truth detection abilities should be reported as: ‘‘as good as others’’. However, earlier studies showed that most people overestimate their own ability to detect lies (Ekman & O’Sullivan, 1991; Elaad, 2003). This bias fits general human assumptions that most communications are truthful and that if they are not, their lack of veracity can be unveiled (e.g., Simpson, 2007). In this paper, we will focus on investigating self-assessments of: the perceived ability to tell the truth convincingly, the perceived ability to identify truth told by another person, and the perceived abilities to tell lies convincingly and detect lies in others. Earlier studies demonstrated that these perceived abilities are biased (e.g., Elaad, 2009, in press). We will further examine attachment differences related to these perceived abilities because evidence suggests that attachment orientations are connected to issues of truth and deception (e.g., Gillath, Sesko, Shaver, & Chun, 2010; Hazan & Shaver, 1987). As far as we know, this is the first study to examine association between attachment orientations and self-assessments of the four abilities mentioned above. Different biases in self-assessed abilities to tell and detect lies and truths have been found when different populations were examined. For example, studies showed that law-enforcement ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel./fax: +972 25865634. E-mail address: [email protected] (E. Elaad). 0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2011.12.018
officers estimated their lie-detection ability as being higher than average (Elaad, 2003, 2009), but students did not (Elaad, in press). Similarly, research showed that police interrogators estimated their lie-telling abilities as higher than average, but prisoners, laypersons and students did not (Elaad, 2009, in press). These differences may be related to contextual factors (i.e., individuals’ vocational environment), but also to personality underlying vocational choice or development (e.g., the choice of working at a job focused on detecting lies may be related to certain perceptions of relatively high a priori self-evaluations of lie-detection abilities). Thus, in the current study we aimed to explore associations between abilities of telling and detecting lies and truths and attachment factors. We chose to focus on attachment orientations which reflect internal working models of self, others and relationships (Bowlby, 1982), as an exemplary case for individual characteristics which are linked to the related perceptions of the four mentioned abilities. We hypothesized that differences in self reported abilities to tell and detect lies and truths would be related to differences in attachment orientations. Attachment theory (e.g., Bowlby, 1982; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007) suggests that caregivers (usually parents), who provide security in childhood by responding effectively to the child’s needs, help the child develop positive mental representations of the self and his/her relationship partners. These sensitive, responsive, attachment figures also support the development of effective emotion regulation strategies and adaptive techniques to cope with threats and stressors. Consequently, secure children and adults are less defensive, establish relationships that are more open, and demonstrate greater emotional awareness (Gillath et al.,
E. Elaad et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 52 (2012) 670–673
2010). Secure adults report being honest (Gillath et al., 2010), and trusting, and describe other people as basically good, and wellintentioned (Hazan & Shaver, 1987). Conversely, unsupportive and unreliable caregivers facilitate development of insecure attachment orientations, characterized by negative representations of the self and/or of others (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007), often leading to frequent use of self-protective defenses that interfere with empathy and openness, and encourage dishonesty (Gillath et al., 2010). Two distinct dimensions reflecting different kinds of insecurity are attachment anxiety and avoidance (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991). Individuals who have high attachment anxiety are characterized by fears of rejection or abandonment, a low sense of selfworth, negative beliefs about themselves and others, and low trust in others. These individuals obsessively try to please others and avoid conflict, confrontation, and disappointments (Gudjonsson, Sigurdsson, Lydsdottir, & Olafsdottir, 2008). In contrast, avoidant attachment is characterized by discomfort with closeness and reluctance to depend on relationship partners. It is associated with negative representations of others (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991); unwillingness to disclose feelings to others; reluctance to seek and provide help; and low relationship satisfaction, trust, and commitment (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). Despite attachment orientations’ connection to issues of honesty, very few studies have examined attachment insecurities and lie/truth related issues (Gillath et al., 2010). The few studies that examined these issues linked attachment insecurities (anxiety and avoidance) with dishonesty: Cole (2001) found that attachment anxiety and avoidance were both related to dishonesty in romantic relationships, and Ennis, Vrij, and Chance (2008) showed similar associations between anxiety and lying to strangers and best friends, and between avoidance and lying to romantic partners. Gillath et al. (2010) also reported association between attachment insecurities, reported lying, and beliefs that one’s romantic partner is lying. Lopez and Rice’s (2006) study of the Authenticity Relationship Scale supported these findings by revealing strong negative links between attachment anxiety and avoidance and the unacceptability of deception scales. Taken together, these findings suggest that insecure (anxious and avoidant) individuals tend to lie more, and may imply that their ratings of lie-telling abilities would be higher. But high selfratings of lie telling abilities do not reflect common use of lies, but rather the subjective evaluation of how successful the individual is in delivering them and in convincing others that they are truths. Thus despite their lie-telling tendencies, typical low self -esteem, and strong need for others’ reassurance, we hypothesized that attachment anxiety will be associated with lower self-reports of the abilities to tell and detect lies and truths. As to avoidant individuals, despite empirical indications of their lacking relationship skills, they do not tend to have a lower self-esteem or devaluate their interpersonal skills (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). We hypothesized that avoidant individuals’ disbelief in others will lead them to rate their truth-related abilities relatively low, but we are not sure if and how it would affect their self evaluations of their lie -related abilities. Understanding the relationships between perceived abilities to tell and detect lies and truths and attachment insecurities will not only increase our knowledge about the effects of attachment factors on these perceived abilities, but may also shed light on the choice of communication mechanisms that insecure individuals use in their interpersonal relationships. This choice may, in turn, influence their relationships. The current study focused on a sample of adolescents. This age group’s lying has hardly been studied (Warr, 2007), and their inclinations to adopt lie and truth biases have not been studied at all. Adolescents possess unique attributes, such as spending increasing
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amounts of time with peers (Warr, 2005), and often telling lies to their parents in an attempt to achieve greater autonomy (Arnett-Jensen, Jensen-Arnett, Feldman, & Cauffman, 2004). Gaining lying experience may further develop their lie-telling abilities and their overall self-confidence in their telling and detecting skills, but can also reflect reduced emphasis on truth related issues. It is hypothesized that adolescents with anxious attachment will have more difficulties negotiating their autonomy than secure adolescents, due to their negative self-perceptions and overdependence. As a result, we believe that anxious adolescents will have more doubts about their perceived abilities to tell and detect lies and truths. Findings in support of this hypothesis further strengthen our previous hypothesis about a negative association between anxiety and self-ratings of the mentioned abilities. If supported, the links between attachment insecurities and poorer perceived lie and truth related abilities may have important implications. Adolescents with insecure attachment orientation are more likely to acquire delinquent friends (Fergusson & Horwood, 1999; Warr, 2007) and be themselves interrogated for criminal acts. The expected association between insecure attachment orientation of adolescents and the inability to deliver their truth convincingly may impair their chances to convince the interrogators and the court of their innocence. 2. Method 2.1. Participants We surveyed 121 Israeli adolescents (54 males and 67 females), ranging in age from 14 to 18 (M = 17.0, SD = 1.04), who volunteered to take part in the study. 2.2. Materials Participants were asked to complete two measures (a) The Hebrew version of the Experiences in Close Relationships (ECR) questionnaire (Brennan, Clark, & Shaver, 1998), which was translated and validated by Mikulincer and Florian (2000). The questionnaire comprises two distinct subscales tapping attachment anxiety (e.g., ‘‘I worry about being abandoned’’) and avoidance (e.g., ‘‘I prefer not to show a partner how I feel deep down’’). Participants rated each of the 36 items (18 on each scale) on a 1 ( strongly disagree) to 7 ( strongly agree) Likert scale. In the current study, the two subscales were uncorrelated, as expected ( r = .17, ns), and showed satisfactory internal reliabilities (a = .89 and a = .79, for anxiety and avoidance, respectively). (b) The Lies and Truth Related Abilities Questionnaire, in which participants self-assessed their own lie-telling, lie-detecting, truth detecting, and truth-telling abilities relative to other people’s abilities, on a scale ranging from 0 (much worse than others) to 100 (much better than others), with 50 (as good as others) serving as the middle point. This scale has been used in previous studies (e.g., Elaad, 2009, in press). To control for potential order effects, one half of the participants received the questionnaire in the above described order and one half in reverse order. 2.3. Procedure Participants completed the questionnaires individually at their schools. They were told that the goal of the study was to explore students’ attitudes toward lying and truth-telling, and were
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assured of their anonymity. Upon completing the survey, participants were thanked and debriefed. 3. Results
Taken together, these results highlight the robust negative association between avoidance and truth-telling ratings, and negative associations between anxiety and overall communication ratings, driven mainly by negative associations between anxiety and lie -related and telling-related abilities.
3.1. Self-assessment of telling and detecting lies and truths abilities The means and standard deviations for the self-assessed abilities are presented in Table 1. A 2 2 ANOVA with two within subject factors – Sincerity (lies, truths) and Communication (to tell, to detect) – was conducted on the self-assessed ratings. A significant main effect was revealed for sincerity (F(1,120) = 9.11, p = .003, g2p = .07). Participants assessed their truth-related abilities higher than their lie-related abilities. A significant interaction was found for Sincerity Communication (F(1,120) = 49.84, p < .001, g2p = .29). Table 1 shows that participants assessed their lie-detecting abilities significantly higher than their lie-telling abilities, (t(120) = 5.4, p < .001). As for truths the truth-telling abilities were rated higher than the truth-detecting abilities, (t(120) = 4.8, p < .001). In both cases a matched t-test was used. 3.2. Attachment orientations and perceived abilities to tell and detect lies and truths To examine the contribution of attachment orientations to predictions of the perceived abilities two multivariate multiple regressions were conducted. In the first regression, attachment orientations (i.e., anxiety and avoidance) were entered as independent variables, predicting the four abilities that participants rated (i.e., telling lies, detecting lies, telling truths and detecting truths). Results revealed a significant overall avoidance effect (Wilk’s k = .91, F = 2.95, p = .02). An examination of the univariate tests showed that this effect was driven by a significant effect of avoidance on truth telling ratings (b = .30, F = 5.82, p = .02). No significant effects were found for anxiety. In the second regression, attachment orientations (i.e., anxiety and avoidance) were entered as independent variables, predicting participants’ computed scores of lies-related abilities, truth-related abilities, telling abilities and detecting abilities. Again, results revealed a significant overall effect for avoidance (Wilk’s k = .91, F = 3.64, p = .02). An examination of the univariate tests showed that this effect was driven by a significant effect of avoidance on truthrelated ratings (b = .22, F = 5.75, p = .02). The univariate tests revealed significant effects of anxiety on lie-related ratings (b = .23, F = 5.10, p = .03) and on telling-related ratings (b = .19, F = 4.32, p = .04). Finally, a multiple regression was conducted to examine associations between attachment orientations (i.e., anxiety and avoidance) on the total sum of the four abilities’ ratings. The regression model was significant (R square = .05, F = 3.00, p = .05). Attachment anxiety had a significant contribution to overall ratings of the communication abilities (b = .15, p = .02), while attachment avoidance’s contribution was non significant (b = .03, ns).
Table 1 Percent means (and SDs) of self-assessed abilities to detect and tell lies and truths.
Mean SD
Detect Lies
Tell Lies
Detect Truths
Tell Truths
Truth
Lies
Detect
Tell
Total
.63 .21
.49 .28
.56 .19
.68 .18
.62 .13
.56 .20
.59 .13
.58 .18
.59 .13
Truths = (detect truth + tell truth)/2, Lies = (detect lies + tell lies)/2, Detect = (detect truth + detect lies)/2, Tell = (tell lies + tell truth)/2, Total = (detect truth + tell truth + detect lies + tell lies)/4.
4. Discussion As far as we know, this study is the first to examine self-assessed abilities to tell and detect lies and truths and the role of attachment orientation in predicting these abilities among adolescents. The results show that adolescents generally estimate their own lie-detection abilities as being higher than the abilities of others. These results correspond to previous findings obtained in samples of law enforcement officers (Elaad, 2003, 2009), and laypersons (Elaad, 2009), but are inconsistent with actual liedetection performance as described in a meta-analysis by Bond and DePaulo (2008). The biased assessments in the current study may reflect a general tendency to overestimate truth-related abilities (i.e., truth telling and truth detecting) that enhance development of relationships. Although not realistic, such a bias may be adaptive because it supports the establishment of social bonds (e.g., Simpson, 2007). Other results in this study also support this explanation, and suggest that truth-related skills are rated higher than lie-related skills (lie-telling and lie detecting). As expected, attachment anxiety predicted lower ratings of overall self-assessed abilities. These results could be due to their tendency towards a negative self-perception and low self esteem. These results also correspond with previous findings that imply lower relationship-related skills of anxious individuals (see Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007 for a review). The reported poor communication skills may play an important role in anxious individuals’ relational difficulties and in their (and their partners’) low relationship satisfaction, reported in previous studies (e.g., Feeney, 1994). Avoidant attachment predicted low ratings of self-assessed ability to tell the truth but was not associated with the other three self-reported communication skills. These interesting results suggest that avoidant individuals feel that they are mistrusted more than others when telling the truth, a result that may reflect a projection of their own distrust of others, but may also indicate a genuine difficulty of delivering the truth convincingly. This finding suggests that avoidant individuals not only hesitate to believe others, but also feel that others do not believe them, even when they tell the truth. Such a notion can be one of the reasons for their frequent lying, reported in previous studies (e.g., Gillath et al., 2010), which is motivated by their sense that they would not be believed in either case. The above reported associations between the four communication abilities and attachment orientations imply that anxious and avoidant adolescents’ relational difficulties may stem from poor (or poorly evaluated) skills of delivering (and for anxious individuals, also detecting) truth and lies. For example, anxious individuals’ poor communication skills may enhance their fears about their partners’ fidelity (reported in Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). The self-assessed evaluation of communication skills, which we used in this study, is a common practice in this type of research (e.g., Cole, 2001: Ennis et al., 2008). However, this method also has been criticized for failure to reveal the truth: it is possible that the biased self-assessments of participants’ truth-related abilities are deliberately inflated for purposes of self-presentation. Although a recent study (Williams & Gilovich, 2008) showed that people truly believe in their self-enhanced ratings and take their estimates seriously enough to guide their actions, social desirabil-
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ity and other self-report biases may still undermine this study of adolescents. Furthermore, even if we consider the present attitudes of adolescents as valid descriptions of their perceived abilities and felt emotions, we still cannot refer to them as indicators of their actual behavior. The role of future research is to clarify this point comparing the actual behavior of people with secure and insecure attachment styles to lies and truths. Based on the results reported in this paper, we predict that insecure participants will fail to conceal their lies and fail to tell convincing truths. In addition, the role of communication skills and their self-reported evaluation in the development and maintenance of relationships and their outcomes has yet to be examined. Future research should also examine variables that potentially mediate between attachment orientation and the perceived ability to tell the truth convincingly, such as the level of trust. On a more practical level, adolescents with insecure attachment orientation are more likely to acquire delinquent friends (Fergusson & Horwood, 1999; Warr, 2007) and be themselves engaged in criminal acts. It is not infrequent that such adolescents find themselves interrogated for crimes they committed but also for crimes they did not commit. Police interrogators’ tendency is to be suspicious and to overestimate their lie-detecting abilities (Elaad, 2003; Meissner & Kassin, 2002). The perceived inability of insecure adolescents to deliver their truth convincingly may be amplified by the interrogators’ suspicious attitude and shatters the low confidence of the insecure innocent suspect even further. It may increase their frustration and defensiveness and further enhance interrogators’ aggressive interrogation efforts (Kassin, 2005). Such dynamics may lead to false confessions. Similar effects may occur in the courtroom when insecure witnesses find themselves under cross-examination. Truthful insecurely attached witnesses may be unsure about their ability to deliver the truth convincingly and exhibit low confidence. Their insecurity may convince the interrogating attorney to adopt even more aggressive techniques and put more pressure on the poor truthful witness. The witness is now frustrated feeling that the attorneys’ attitude prevented the truth from coming to light. This state of mind is accompanied by nervousness and other behavioral cues that are frequently attributed to dishonesty. The ultimate result may be that the truthful insecure witness will fail to convince the court. References Arnett-Jensen, L., Jensen-Arnett, J., Feldman, S. S., & Cauffman, E. (2004). The right to do wrong: Lying to parents among adolescents and emerging adults. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 33, 101–112.
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Bartholomew, K., & Horowitz, L. M. (1991). Attachment styles among young adults: A test of a four-category model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 226–244. Bond, C. F., & DePaulo, B. M. (2008). Individual differences in judging deception: Accuracy and Bias. Psychological Bulletin, 134, 477–492. Bowlby, J. (1982). Attachment and loss (Vol. 1). Attachment (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Basic Books. Brennan, K. A., Clark, C. L., & Shaver, P. R. (1998). Self-report measurement of adult attachment: An integrative overview. In J. A. Simpson & W. S. Rholes (Eds.), Attachment theory and close relationships (pp. 46–76). New York: Guilford. Cole, T. (2001). Lying to the one you love: The use of deception in romantic relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 18, 107–129. Ekman, P., & O’Sullivan, M. (1991). Who can catch a liar? American Psychologist, 46, 913–920. Elaad, E. (2003). Effects of feedback on the overestimated capacity to detect lies and the underestimated ability to tell lies. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 17, 349–363. Elaad, E. (2009). Lie detection biases among male police interrogators, prisoners, and laypersons. Psychological Reports, 105, 1047–1056. Elaad, E. (in press). Effects of feedback on self-assessed and actual abilities to tell lies. In: A. E. Hasselm (Ed.), Crime: Causes, types and victims. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers.. Ennis, E., Vrij, A., & Chance, C. (2008). Individual differences and lying in everyday life. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 25, 105–118. Feeney, J. A. (1994). Attachment style, communication patterns, and satisfaction across the life cycle of marriage. Personal Relationships, 1, 333–348. Fergusson, D. M., & Horwood, L. J. (1999). Prospective childhood predictors of deviant peer affiliations in adolescence. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 40, 581–592. Gillath, O., Sesko, A. K., Shaver, P. R., & Chun, D. S. (2010). Attachment, authenticity, and honesty: Dispositional and experimentally induced security can reduce self-and other-deception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 841–855. Gudjonsson, G. H., Sigurdsson, J. F., Lydsdottir, L. B., & Olafsdottir, H. (2008). The relationship between adult romantic attachment and compliance. Personality and Individual Differences, 45, 276–280. Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 511–524. Kassin, S. M. (2005). On the psychology of confessions: Does innocence put innocents at risk? American Psychologist, 60, 215–228. Lopez, F. G., & Rice, K. G. (2006). Preliminary development and validation of a measure of relationship authenticity. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 53, 362–371. Meissner, C. A., & Kassin, S. M. (2002). ‘‘He’s guilty!’’: Investigator bias in judgments of truth and deception. Law and Human Behavior, 26, 469–480. Mikulincer, M., & Florian, V. (2000). Exploring individual differences in reactions to morality salience. Does attachment style regulate terror management mechanisms? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 260–273. Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2007). Attachment patterns in adulthood: Structure, dynamics, and change. New York, NY: Guilford Press. Simpson, J. A. (2007). Psychological foundations of trust. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16, 264–268. Warr, M. (2005). Making delinquent friends: Adult supervision and children’s affiliations. Criminology, 43, 77–105. Warr, M. (2007). The tangled web: Delinquency, deception, and parental attachment. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 36, 607–622. Williams, E. F., & Gilovich, T. (2008). Do people really believe they are above average? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1121–1128.
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Personality and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid
Lies, truths, and attachment orientations in late adolescence Eitan Elaad ⇑, Shiri Lavy, Diana Cohenca, Ester Berholz, Pnina Thee, Yaara Ben-Gigi Ariel University Center, Ariel 40700, Israel
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 26 May 2011 Received in revised form 28 November 2011 Accepted 14 December 2011 Available online 14 January 2012 Keywords: Lies Truths Lie-detection Truth-telling Attachment Biases
a b s t r a c t In this paper we examine the association between adolescents’ attachment orientations and their perceived abilities to tell and detect lies and truths. The 121 adolescents who participated in this study (a) self-assessed their abilities to tell and detect lies and truths and (b) completed a measure of attachment orientations (ECR). Results indicated that participants overestimated their truth-related abilities (i.e., truth telling and truth detecting) and their lie detection abilities, but not their lie-telling abilities. Attachment anxiety predicted poor subjective abilities related to lies (i.e., telling and detecting lies) and poor subjective abilities related to delivering messages (i.e., telling lies and truths). Attachment avoidance predicted low self-ratings of truth-telling abilities. This is the first study to link insecure attachment orientations with perceived abilities to tell and detect lies and truths, and the first to link avoidance to lack of self-confidence in delivering truthful messages. The implications of these findings for interpersonal relationships, criminal interrogation, and court litigations are discussed. Suggestions for future studies examining broader implications of the results are offered. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Bond and DePaulo (2008) conclude that people differ little from one another in their ability to detect lies. Their report implies that most people’s unbiased self-assessment of lie and truth detection abilities should be reported as: ‘‘as good as others’’. However, earlier studies showed that most people overestimate their own ability to detect lies (Ekman & O’Sullivan, 1991; Elaad, 2003). This bias fits general human assumptions that most communications are truthful and that if they are not, their lack of veracity can be unveiled (e.g., Simpson, 2007). In this paper, we will focus on investigating self-assessments of: the perceived ability to tell the truth convincingly, the perceived ability to identify truth told by another person, and the perceived abilities to tell lies convincingly and detect lies in others. Earlier studies demonstrated that these perceived abilities are biased (e.g., Elaad, 2009, in press). We will further examine attachment differences related to these perceived abilities because evidence suggests that attachment orientations are connected to issues of truth and deception (e.g., Gillath, Sesko, Shaver, & Chun, 2010; Hazan & Shaver, 1987). As far as we know, this is the first study to examine association between attachment orientations and self-assessments of the four abilities mentioned above. Different biases in self-assessed abilities to tell and detect lies and truths have been found when different populations were examined. For example, studies showed that law-enforcement ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel./fax: +972 25865634. E-mail address: [email protected] (E. Elaad). 0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2011.12.018
officers estimated their lie-detection ability as being higher than average (Elaad, 2003, 2009), but students did not (Elaad, in press). Similarly, research showed that police interrogators estimated their lie-telling abilities as higher than average, but prisoners, laypersons and students did not (Elaad, 2009, in press). These differences may be related to contextual factors (i.e., individuals’ vocational environment), but also to personality underlying vocational choice or development (e.g., the choice of working at a job focused on detecting lies may be related to certain perceptions of relatively high a priori self-evaluations of lie-detection abilities). Thus, in the current study we aimed to explore associations between abilities of telling and detecting lies and truths and attachment factors. We chose to focus on attachment orientations which reflect internal working models of self, others and relationships (Bowlby, 1982), as an exemplary case for individual characteristics which are linked to the related perceptions of the four mentioned abilities. We hypothesized that differences in self reported abilities to tell and detect lies and truths would be related to differences in attachment orientations. Attachment theory (e.g., Bowlby, 1982; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007) suggests that caregivers (usually parents), who provide security in childhood by responding effectively to the child’s needs, help the child develop positive mental representations of the self and his/her relationship partners. These sensitive, responsive, attachment figures also support the development of effective emotion regulation strategies and adaptive techniques to cope with threats and stressors. Consequently, secure children and adults are less defensive, establish relationships that are more open, and demonstrate greater emotional awareness (Gillath et al.,
E. Elaad et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 52 (2012) 670–673
2010). Secure adults report being honest (Gillath et al., 2010), and trusting, and describe other people as basically good, and wellintentioned (Hazan & Shaver, 1987). Conversely, unsupportive and unreliable caregivers facilitate development of insecure attachment orientations, characterized by negative representations of the self and/or of others (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007), often leading to frequent use of self-protective defenses that interfere with empathy and openness, and encourage dishonesty (Gillath et al., 2010). Two distinct dimensions reflecting different kinds of insecurity are attachment anxiety and avoidance (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991). Individuals who have high attachment anxiety are characterized by fears of rejection or abandonment, a low sense of selfworth, negative beliefs about themselves and others, and low trust in others. These individuals obsessively try to please others and avoid conflict, confrontation, and disappointments (Gudjonsson, Sigurdsson, Lydsdottir, & Olafsdottir, 2008). In contrast, avoidant attachment is characterized by discomfort with closeness and reluctance to depend on relationship partners. It is associated with negative representations of others (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991); unwillingness to disclose feelings to others; reluctance to seek and provide help; and low relationship satisfaction, trust, and commitment (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). Despite attachment orientations’ connection to issues of honesty, very few studies have examined attachment insecurities and lie/truth related issues (Gillath et al., 2010). The few studies that examined these issues linked attachment insecurities (anxiety and avoidance) with dishonesty: Cole (2001) found that attachment anxiety and avoidance were both related to dishonesty in romantic relationships, and Ennis, Vrij, and Chance (2008) showed similar associations between anxiety and lying to strangers and best friends, and between avoidance and lying to romantic partners. Gillath et al. (2010) also reported association between attachment insecurities, reported lying, and beliefs that one’s romantic partner is lying. Lopez and Rice’s (2006) study of the Authenticity Relationship Scale supported these findings by revealing strong negative links between attachment anxiety and avoidance and the unacceptability of deception scales. Taken together, these findings suggest that insecure (anxious and avoidant) individuals tend to lie more, and may imply that their ratings of lie-telling abilities would be higher. But high selfratings of lie telling abilities do not reflect common use of lies, but rather the subjective evaluation of how successful the individual is in delivering them and in convincing others that they are truths. Thus despite their lie-telling tendencies, typical low self -esteem, and strong need for others’ reassurance, we hypothesized that attachment anxiety will be associated with lower self-reports of the abilities to tell and detect lies and truths. As to avoidant individuals, despite empirical indications of their lacking relationship skills, they do not tend to have a lower self-esteem or devaluate their interpersonal skills (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). We hypothesized that avoidant individuals’ disbelief in others will lead them to rate their truth-related abilities relatively low, but we are not sure if and how it would affect their self evaluations of their lie -related abilities. Understanding the relationships between perceived abilities to tell and detect lies and truths and attachment insecurities will not only increase our knowledge about the effects of attachment factors on these perceived abilities, but may also shed light on the choice of communication mechanisms that insecure individuals use in their interpersonal relationships. This choice may, in turn, influence their relationships. The current study focused on a sample of adolescents. This age group’s lying has hardly been studied (Warr, 2007), and their inclinations to adopt lie and truth biases have not been studied at all. Adolescents possess unique attributes, such as spending increasing
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amounts of time with peers (Warr, 2005), and often telling lies to their parents in an attempt to achieve greater autonomy (Arnett-Jensen, Jensen-Arnett, Feldman, & Cauffman, 2004). Gaining lying experience may further develop their lie-telling abilities and their overall self-confidence in their telling and detecting skills, but can also reflect reduced emphasis on truth related issues. It is hypothesized that adolescents with anxious attachment will have more difficulties negotiating their autonomy than secure adolescents, due to their negative self-perceptions and overdependence. As a result, we believe that anxious adolescents will have more doubts about their perceived abilities to tell and detect lies and truths. Findings in support of this hypothesis further strengthen our previous hypothesis about a negative association between anxiety and self-ratings of the mentioned abilities. If supported, the links between attachment insecurities and poorer perceived lie and truth related abilities may have important implications. Adolescents with insecure attachment orientation are more likely to acquire delinquent friends (Fergusson & Horwood, 1999; Warr, 2007) and be themselves interrogated for criminal acts. The expected association between insecure attachment orientation of adolescents and the inability to deliver their truth convincingly may impair their chances to convince the interrogators and the court of their innocence. 2. Method 2.1. Participants We surveyed 121 Israeli adolescents (54 males and 67 females), ranging in age from 14 to 18 (M = 17.0, SD = 1.04), who volunteered to take part in the study. 2.2. Materials Participants were asked to complete two measures (a) The Hebrew version of the Experiences in Close Relationships (ECR) questionnaire (Brennan, Clark, & Shaver, 1998), which was translated and validated by Mikulincer and Florian (2000). The questionnaire comprises two distinct subscales tapping attachment anxiety (e.g., ‘‘I worry about being abandoned’’) and avoidance (e.g., ‘‘I prefer not to show a partner how I feel deep down’’). Participants rated each of the 36 items (18 on each scale) on a 1 ( strongly disagree) to 7 ( strongly agree) Likert scale. In the current study, the two subscales were uncorrelated, as expected ( r = .17, ns), and showed satisfactory internal reliabilities (a = .89 and a = .79, for anxiety and avoidance, respectively). (b) The Lies and Truth Related Abilities Questionnaire, in which participants self-assessed their own lie-telling, lie-detecting, truth detecting, and truth-telling abilities relative to other people’s abilities, on a scale ranging from 0 (much worse than others) to 100 (much better than others), with 50 (as good as others) serving as the middle point. This scale has been used in previous studies (e.g., Elaad, 2009, in press). To control for potential order effects, one half of the participants received the questionnaire in the above described order and one half in reverse order. 2.3. Procedure Participants completed the questionnaires individually at their schools. They were told that the goal of the study was to explore students’ attitudes toward lying and truth-telling, and were
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assured of their anonymity. Upon completing the survey, participants were thanked and debriefed. 3. Results
Taken together, these results highlight the robust negative association between avoidance and truth-telling ratings, and negative associations between anxiety and overall communication ratings, driven mainly by negative associations between anxiety and lie -related and telling-related abilities.
3.1. Self-assessment of telling and detecting lies and truths abilities The means and standard deviations for the self-assessed abilities are presented in Table 1. A 2 2 ANOVA with two within subject factors – Sincerity (lies, truths) and Communication (to tell, to detect) – was conducted on the self-assessed ratings. A significant main effect was revealed for sincerity (F(1,120) = 9.11, p = .003, g2p = .07). Participants assessed their truth-related abilities higher than their lie-related abilities. A significant interaction was found for Sincerity Communication (F(1,120) = 49.84, p < .001, g2p = .29). Table 1 shows that participants assessed their lie-detecting abilities significantly higher than their lie-telling abilities, (t(120) = 5.4, p < .001). As for truths the truth-telling abilities were rated higher than the truth-detecting abilities, (t(120) = 4.8, p < .001). In both cases a matched t-test was used. 3.2. Attachment orientations and perceived abilities to tell and detect lies and truths To examine the contribution of attachment orientations to predictions of the perceived abilities two multivariate multiple regressions were conducted. In the first regression, attachment orientations (i.e., anxiety and avoidance) were entered as independent variables, predicting the four abilities that participants rated (i.e., telling lies, detecting lies, telling truths and detecting truths). Results revealed a significant overall avoidance effect (Wilk’s k = .91, F = 2.95, p = .02). An examination of the univariate tests showed that this effect was driven by a significant effect of avoidance on truth telling ratings (b = .30, F = 5.82, p = .02). No significant effects were found for anxiety. In the second regression, attachment orientations (i.e., anxiety and avoidance) were entered as independent variables, predicting participants’ computed scores of lies-related abilities, truth-related abilities, telling abilities and detecting abilities. Again, results revealed a significant overall effect for avoidance (Wilk’s k = .91, F = 3.64, p = .02). An examination of the univariate tests showed that this effect was driven by a significant effect of avoidance on truthrelated ratings (b = .22, F = 5.75, p = .02). The univariate tests revealed significant effects of anxiety on lie-related ratings (b = .23, F = 5.10, p = .03) and on telling-related ratings (b = .19, F = 4.32, p = .04). Finally, a multiple regression was conducted to examine associations between attachment orientations (i.e., anxiety and avoidance) on the total sum of the four abilities’ ratings. The regression model was significant (R square = .05, F = 3.00, p = .05). Attachment anxiety had a significant contribution to overall ratings of the communication abilities (b = .15, p = .02), while attachment avoidance’s contribution was non significant (b = .03, ns).
Table 1 Percent means (and SDs) of self-assessed abilities to detect and tell lies and truths.
Mean SD
Detect Lies
Tell Lies
Detect Truths
Tell Truths
Truth
Lies
Detect
Tell
Total
.63 .21
.49 .28
.56 .19
.68 .18
.62 .13
.56 .20
.59 .13
.58 .18
.59 .13
Truths = (detect truth + tell truth)/2, Lies = (detect lies + tell lies)/2, Detect = (detect truth + detect lies)/2, Tell = (tell lies + tell truth)/2, Total = (detect truth + tell truth + detect lies + tell lies)/4.
4. Discussion As far as we know, this study is the first to examine self-assessed abilities to tell and detect lies and truths and the role of attachment orientation in predicting these abilities among adolescents. The results show that adolescents generally estimate their own lie-detection abilities as being higher than the abilities of others. These results correspond to previous findings obtained in samples of law enforcement officers (Elaad, 2003, 2009), and laypersons (Elaad, 2009), but are inconsistent with actual liedetection performance as described in a meta-analysis by Bond and DePaulo (2008). The biased assessments in the current study may reflect a general tendency to overestimate truth-related abilities (i.e., truth telling and truth detecting) that enhance development of relationships. Although not realistic, such a bias may be adaptive because it supports the establishment of social bonds (e.g., Simpson, 2007). Other results in this study also support this explanation, and suggest that truth-related skills are rated higher than lie-related skills (lie-telling and lie detecting). As expected, attachment anxiety predicted lower ratings of overall self-assessed abilities. These results could be due to their tendency towards a negative self-perception and low self esteem. These results also correspond with previous findings that imply lower relationship-related skills of anxious individuals (see Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007 for a review). The reported poor communication skills may play an important role in anxious individuals’ relational difficulties and in their (and their partners’) low relationship satisfaction, reported in previous studies (e.g., Feeney, 1994). Avoidant attachment predicted low ratings of self-assessed ability to tell the truth but was not associated with the other three self-reported communication skills. These interesting results suggest that avoidant individuals feel that they are mistrusted more than others when telling the truth, a result that may reflect a projection of their own distrust of others, but may also indicate a genuine difficulty of delivering the truth convincingly. This finding suggests that avoidant individuals not only hesitate to believe others, but also feel that others do not believe them, even when they tell the truth. Such a notion can be one of the reasons for their frequent lying, reported in previous studies (e.g., Gillath et al., 2010), which is motivated by their sense that they would not be believed in either case. The above reported associations between the four communication abilities and attachment orientations imply that anxious and avoidant adolescents’ relational difficulties may stem from poor (or poorly evaluated) skills of delivering (and for anxious individuals, also detecting) truth and lies. For example, anxious individuals’ poor communication skills may enhance their fears about their partners’ fidelity (reported in Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). The self-assessed evaluation of communication skills, which we used in this study, is a common practice in this type of research (e.g., Cole, 2001: Ennis et al., 2008). However, this method also has been criticized for failure to reveal the truth: it is possible that the biased self-assessments of participants’ truth-related abilities are deliberately inflated for purposes of self-presentation. Although a recent study (Williams & Gilovich, 2008) showed that people truly believe in their self-enhanced ratings and take their estimates seriously enough to guide their actions, social desirabil-
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ity and other self-report biases may still undermine this study of adolescents. Furthermore, even if we consider the present attitudes of adolescents as valid descriptions of their perceived abilities and felt emotions, we still cannot refer to them as indicators of their actual behavior. The role of future research is to clarify this point comparing the actual behavior of people with secure and insecure attachment styles to lies and truths. Based on the results reported in this paper, we predict that insecure participants will fail to conceal their lies and fail to tell convincing truths. In addition, the role of communication skills and their self-reported evaluation in the development and maintenance of relationships and their outcomes has yet to be examined. Future research should also examine variables that potentially mediate between attachment orientation and the perceived ability to tell the truth convincingly, such as the level of trust. On a more practical level, adolescents with insecure attachment orientation are more likely to acquire delinquent friends (Fergusson & Horwood, 1999; Warr, 2007) and be themselves engaged in criminal acts. It is not infrequent that such adolescents find themselves interrogated for crimes they committed but also for crimes they did not commit. Police interrogators’ tendency is to be suspicious and to overestimate their lie-detecting abilities (Elaad, 2003; Meissner & Kassin, 2002). The perceived inability of insecure adolescents to deliver their truth convincingly may be amplified by the interrogators’ suspicious attitude and shatters the low confidence of the insecure innocent suspect even further. It may increase their frustration and defensiveness and further enhance interrogators’ aggressive interrogation efforts (Kassin, 2005). Such dynamics may lead to false confessions. Similar effects may occur in the courtroom when insecure witnesses find themselves under cross-examination. Truthful insecurely attached witnesses may be unsure about their ability to deliver the truth convincingly and exhibit low confidence. Their insecurity may convince the interrogating attorney to adopt even more aggressive techniques and put more pressure on the poor truthful witness. The witness is now frustrated feeling that the attorneys’ attitude prevented the truth from coming to light. This state of mind is accompanied by nervousness and other behavioral cues that are frequently attributed to dishonesty. The ultimate result may be that the truthful insecure witness will fail to convince the court. References Arnett-Jensen, L., Jensen-Arnett, J., Feldman, S. S., & Cauffman, E. (2004). The right to do wrong: Lying to parents among adolescents and emerging adults. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 33, 101–112.
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