Telling a convincing story: Richness in detail as a function of gender and information

We examined whether and how levels of richness in detail, a fundamental cue for truthfulness in the Reality Monitoring (RM) tool, change as a function of the interviewee's gender and his/her awareness of this indicator. We collected 160 true and false accounts, written by males and females. Half the participants were informed about the RM criteria, and were encouraged to include them in their accounts. Results demonstrated gender differences in levels of richness for uninformed participants. Specifically, uninformed-females provided better truthful accounts than uninformed-males, and differences in richness between truths and lies emerged only for uninformed-females. Gender differences in levels of richness were eliminated when participants were informed, and discrimination between lies and truths was no longer possible. These findings suggest that the interviewee's gender must be considered when using richness as an indicator for truthfulness, and that the indicator of richness is vulnerable to countermeasures.