• Korean Journal of Forensic Psychology
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.173-190
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to verify whether it is possible for participants to discriminate between innocent and guilty suspects when they are exposed to criminal information utilizing an autobiographical implicit association test (aIAT). A total of 49 college students were randomly assigned to guilty group, innocent-aware group, or innocent-unaware group. Participants performed an aIAT to detect suspects after performing either mock crime or control task. It was verified that innocent suspect and guilty suspect exposed with crime information could be distinguished through D-score and reaction time, converted to symbolize strength of the association between guilty sentences, innocent sentences, and truth sentences. As a result of the analysis, guilty group showed significantly higher D-score than both innocent-aware group and innocent-unaware group. guilty group also showed faster response time in true-guilty condition than true-innocent condition. This shows that the association of true-guilty conditions is stronger than that of true-innocent conditions. On the other hand, the innocent-aware group showed a faster response time in the true-innocent condition than the true-guilty condition, and innocent-unaware group showed no significant difference between the two conditions. Through this, it was confirmed that innocent suspects exposed to criminal information can be discriminated according to the aIAT pattern, which has a faster reaction rate to the truth and innocence union than the guilty group. This study confirmed that suspects exposed to criminal information can be effectively discriminated using aIAT, and further suggests the usefulness and potential of aIAT in the field of lie detection.