Detection of Deception: Reality Monitoring

People sometimes try to determine whether they have actually experienced an event they have in mind, or whether this memory is based on imagination. The processes by which a person attributes a memory to an actual experience (external source) or imagination (internal source) is called reality monitoring (RM). Although the RM concept is not related to deception, scholars believe that the concept has this application and can be used as a lie detection tool. Much of the RM deception research is concerned with testing the assumption that RM assessments can be used to discriminate between liars and truth tellers.

The core of RM is that memories based on real experiences differ in quality from memories based on fiction. In their seminal work on memory characteristics, Marcia ...

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