Bayesian Truth Serum

According to the video, why doesn’t just asking people if they cheated get the true answer?

• You can't really cheat at anything in life

• People Lie

• Cheating can be justified

• This question is a trick, asking directly will get you the true answer

What is the twist to the Bayesian Truth Serum method? 

• Participants receive an injection of the truth serum before they fill in a survey

• Questions in the survey are randomly ordered

• Participants are given the opportunity to justify why they did the action being asked about

• Ask for prediction of % of people who do the action 

Why might someone be more likely to be truthful using this survey method? 

• Because they believe you aren't lying about the survey being anonymous

• You trick them into it by asking the question in multiple ways

• You offer them a reward to tell the truth

• Everyone always tells the truth on surveys, so this works just as well as other methods

What does an i score measure? 

• Surprisingly common answers

• The % of people who cheat on exams

• How egocentric an individual is

• The probability of an individual having an i in their name

What does bayesian truth serum rely on? 

• The correct dosage

• Psychological bias

• A neural network that can analyze the survey results

• Knowing the age of all participants

What psychological bias does Bayesian Truth Serum rely on?

• False Consensus Effect - tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which others agree with them

• False Uniqueness Effect -

  tendency of people to see themselves as more unique than they actually are

• Overconfidence Effect - tendency to have excessive confidence in one's own answers to questions

• Illusory Truth Effect - tendency to believe that a statement is true if it is easier to process

You are likely to think more people cheat if you _____ 

• never cheat

• do your homework

• fail a test

• cheat

Why do the researchers think the Bayesian Truth Serum worked? 

• They were able to verify the accuracy of the results directly

• They don't. It had no effect on participants' reporting behaviour

• Because they had to pay a lot of reward money to participants

• More people admitted to cheating 

Can you tell if an individual is lying using Bayesian Truth Serum? 

• Yes

• No

• Only for certain types of questions