Modelling Perjury: Between Trust and Blame

Abstract I investigate: (1) to what extent do folk ascriptions of lying differ between casual and courtroom contexts? (2) does motive (reason) lie influence trust, mental states, judgments? (3) are judgments consistent with previous communicated content? Following the Supreme Court’s Bronston judgment, expect: averaged be similar in contexts; levels states ascriptions, patterns judgments; retrospective lying, after being presented state world, inconsistent content: participants hold protagonist responsible for content she did not communicate. performed a survey experiment on Qualtrics platform. Participants were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk (N = 630). employed standard Likert scales forced-choice questions. found that: average decreases trust ascription increases judgment; they communicate (effect size difference d .69). Perjury inconsistent. The worries expressed judgment well founded. This article helps reforming jury instructions perjury cases.