Use of mouse-tracking software to detect faking-good behavior on personality questionnaires: an explorative study

“…As expected, the three samples showed significant differences in the underreport level, with the organizational sample clearly presenting both a greater tendency to deny psychological difficulties, and to present in an unrealistically positive way. This sample had the highest T scores is the underreport scales, which is in accordance with results of studies using simulation designs, with the MMPI-2 (e.g., Mazza et al, 2020) and with other personality inventories (e.g., Chantler & Lushington. 2016), in which participants in the faking good condition had significantly higher values in the underreport scales than participants in the honest condition.…”

“…Theories for this phenomenon attribute RT differences between faking-good and honest test-takers to the fact that lying is more cognitively demanding than telling the truth (McDaniel & Timm, 1990;Verschuere, 2018) or that lying produces greater emotional arousal, due to the fear of detection (Vasilopoulos, Reilly, & Leaman, 2000). For the VR scale, we did not observe a difference in temporal variables (RT, MD-time, velocity along the x and y axes) in relation to the different instructions (honest vs. faking-good); this partially aligns with previous findings (Mazza et al, 2020), which indicated that there was no significant difference in temporal mouse dynamics (except for vel y ) between fakers and honest test-takers. The reason why the effect of instructions on most of the temporal mouse dynamics was significant for the PIM scale but not the VR scale could be traced back to the item composition: PIM items are predominantly syntactically affirmative, whereas half of all VR items contain a negation or a double negation.…”

“…Honest respondents seemed to maintain their honesty in the speeded condition, indicating no effect of time pressure; likewise, faking-good respondents showed no significant T-score increase in the speeded condition, relative to the unspeeded condition. A similar finding for faking-good respondents was reported by Mazza et al, (2020) who attributed the lack of difference to a potential learning effect determined by the order in which subjects completed the tests. Specifically, the authors theorized that, when completing the task for the second time, respondents may have remembered some of the items from the first administration; such memory traces may have interfered with the effect of time pressure that has previously been observed in other studies.…”

“…This is consistent with the standard doctrine in cognitive psychology that increased cognitive processing causes delays in response times [8,9] including in speech [10,11]. Even deception without speech, such as in responding dishonestly on personality questionnaires, yields longer response times than responding honestly [12][13][14]. Arousal accounts of deception highlight that lying may cause greater anxiety [15], which increases muscle tension throughout the body including the muscles of the larynx that control the voice [16,17], resulting in higher vocal pitch [18,19].…”