University of Twente Student Theses
Face to Face- would you lie to yourself? : Does a mirror increase people`s self-awareness and their use of self-references while lying?
Maassen, K. (2014) Face to Face- would you lie to yourself? : Does a mirror increase people`s self-awareness and their use of self-references while lying?
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| Abstract: | Lying occurs very often and not always in a conscious way; it occurs in different forms and with different consequences. One case of lying that became popular over night and even had an impact on the political landscape of a country is the allegation of plagiarism against Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. The man was a highly renowned politician in Germany, considered to be the rising star in German politics, maybe even the next chancellor. His involvement in plagiarism ended his political career in one fell swoop. But there are more implications to a lie than that. For example, people are willing to lie as long as they can sustain their positive self-perception. Furthermore the act of lying leaves traces: the word use of deceptive people, especially the use of first-person singular pronouns can reveal liars. The number of self-references liars use, makes them detectable. Therefore it is interesting to know if there is a way to influence people’s self-awareness and if this manipulation can have an effect on people’s use of self-references while lying, and this is the point which will be tested in this bachelor thesis. The elementary question of the thesis is: “What kind of effect could the manipulation of self-awareness by the presence of a mirror have on self-references people use while lying?” Therefor the following Hypothesis is tested: “The use of first- personal singular pronouns decreases, when people are lying, compared to when people are telling the truth and this effect will be reinforced by the presence of a mirror as opposed to when a mirror is absent.” In this experiment 88 datasets of participants with an average age of 22 years were analysed via an Regression analysis followed by an ANOVA. Referring to the data of this study, it turned out that there were no significant results concerning a relationship between a increase of self-awareness and the use of first-person singular pronouns while lying. The presence of the Mirror had no reinforcing effect on the use of first-person singular pronouns. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Bachelor) |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 77 psychology |
| Programme: | Psychology BSc (56604) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/64851 |
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