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Increasing Honest Responding on Cognitive Distortions in Child Molesters: The Bogus Pipeline Revisited

  • Original Paper
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Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment

Abstract

Questionnaires are relied upon by forensic psychologists, clinicians, researchers, and social services to assess child molesters’ (CMs’) offense-supportive beliefs (or cognitive distortions). In this study, we used an experimental procedure to evaluate whether extrafamilial CMs underreported their questionnaire-assessed beliefs. At time one, 41 CMs were questionnaire-assessed under standard conditions (i.e., they were free to impression manage). At time two, CMs were questionnaire-assessed again; 18 were randomly attached to a convincing fake lie detector (a bogus pipeline), the others were free to impression manage. The results showed that bogus pipeline CMs significantly increased cognitive distortion endorsements compared to their own previous endorsements, and their control counterparts’ endorsements. The findings are the first experimental evidence showing that CMs consciously depress their scores on transparent questionnaires.

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Notes

  1. Four fell into the BP group, and three fell into the control group.

  2. This is a further methodological difference associated with our improvement of the BP apparatus and we discuss the implications of this improvement in the discussion.

  3. All significant main effects should be interpreted with reference to significant interactions.

  4. Covariate means are used for all post hoc comparisons reported in this paper.

  5. These are two items that shifted significantly for BP CMs (see Results).

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Acknowledgements

We would particularly like to thank the Department of Corrections for supporting this research, staff at Wellington, Hawkes Bay, Wanganui, and Linton Prisons and, of course, the participants who volunteered. We would also like to thank Peter Reed from the University of Sussex, UK for helping us with the Bogus Pipeline equipment set-up in NZ, and Sarah Reid for helping us to collect data. Finally, we would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments and suggestions. This research was generously supported by the Victoria University of Wellington Research Fund. We would like to point out that the opinions expressed in this manuscript do not reflect views held by the Department of Corrections.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Kent, Canterbury, CT2 7NP, UK

    Theresa A. Gannon

  2. Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, NZ

    Kirsten Keown & Devon L. L. Polaschek

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  1. Theresa A. Gannon
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  2. Kirsten Keown
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  3. Devon L. L. Polaschek
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Correspondence to Theresa A. Gannon.

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Gannon, T.A., Keown, K. & Polaschek, D.L.L. Increasing Honest Responding on Cognitive Distortions in Child Molesters: The Bogus Pipeline Revisited. Sex Abuse 19, 5–22 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11194-006-9033-0

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