The Psychology of Bluffing

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The Psychology of Bluffing
Bluffing can be delineated from lying in general in that bluffing typically involves
attempts at making someone believe something that is not true by virtue of displaying false
confidence in their position. This confidence can be either heightened, such as when you are
trying to convince someone of the strength of your [weak] position, or deflated, such as when
you are attempting to convince someone of the weakness of your [strong] position. Bluffing also
often entails the presentation of misinformation vis-à-vis the manipulation of attractive
alternatives and/or information. That is, one may obscure the range of behavioral options
available to another person by making some options seem more costly or less attractive. For
example, a meek woman being threatened by an attacker may bluff her opponent by standing tall
and taking a fighting stance, hopefully prompting her attacker into thinking the costs are too
great to pursue their aggressive behavior. Another differentiation is that typically the person
being bluffed has the (sometimes unknowing) advantage of time and/or the ability to “call” the
bluff. That is, usually over time the bluffers true position is revealed, as in the case of a poker
hand. Also, the person being bluffed can always “call” or ask the bluffer to present to them the
proof of their false assertions, and unlike a lie this proof is required in order to maintain the
deception. There are many forms of bluffing and each depends on the context, of which there
are three key contexts that stand out in the psychology literature: (1) interrogations, (2) sports,
(3) bargaining or economic settings, and (4) games of chance or skill.
Police officers can employ bluffing as an interrogation method that is used to convince
suspects that the evidence against them is stronger than it actually is. For instance, police may
lie about finding a particular piece of damning evidence or about the results of a forensic test in
the hopes of convincing the suspect that the evidence against him or her is particularly strong and

that denial is futile. This technique is usually combined with falsehoods regarding leniency
should the suspect make a confession. Here, research has shown that bluffing increases the rate
of false confessions. In a seminal paper, Kassin and Kiechel (1996) had research participants
take dictation while in the presence of a confederate. During the dictation the computer crashed,
supposedly because the participant hit the ALT key (something they were informed explicitly not
to do as it would result in crashing the computer). When participants were accused of hitting the
ALT key in conjunction with having the confederate serve as an erroneous eyewitness, the rate
of false confessions nearly doubled to 94%, and of those, 55% actually convinced themselves
that they may have actually hit the ALT key. Recently, research has shown that even more
subtle bluffs can result in surprisingly high levels of false confessions (Perillo & Kassin, 2011).
It seems that innocent suspects will admit to the crime hoping that the false or misrepresented
evidence will exonerate them.
In sports, the majority of research has focused on detecting or anticipating movement.
Being able to anticipate your opponent’s movements can give a strategic advantage in games
such as tennis or soccer. Indeed, laboratory and field studies have both shown that novices tend
to perform worse at detecting the direction of movement than more experienced players.
Research in this context typically uses judgments on kinematic movement; that is, attempting to
discern direction of movement using videos or point-light displays. However, knowing that
anticipation offers strategic advantage, players will often foreshadow false movements to
mislead their opponents into thinking they are taking a direction that they are not. For example,
American football players will often make a movement to the left (or right), and then advance in
the opposite direction to throw off the defending player. Theoretically, the enhanced ability by
experts to detect movement direction should extend towards detecting deceptive movements.

Research supporting this hypothesis is mixed. Research in the domain of boxing found that
novices outperform experts with fewer false alarms, suggesting that too much expertise resulted
in seeing deception that was not there (Ripoll, Kerlirzin, Stein, & Reine, 1995). Contrarily,
research on rugby players found that experts were more discriminating towards deceptive
movements (Jackson, Warren, & Abernethy, 2006). More research in this area is needed.
In the business setting, research on bluffing takes two tracks: One looks at attempting to
conceal your true position in bargaining and the other on presenting falsified information to your
business rivals. In the first line of research, union contracts, car and house sales, and even
market haggling all involve the use of bluffing tactics. Specifically, all tend to imply that their
bottom-line-walk-away position is far lower (or higher) than it really is. For instance, labor
leaders often start by saying they want a large wage increase or else they are walking away from
the bargaining table. In the latter line of research, businesses often will mislead others by filing
erroneous patents, announcing fictitious new products, or by making false alliances. Research in
both of these areas has tended to focus on the moral permissibility of bluffing in business
settings, with scant attention paid to the psychological mechanisms or implications of bluffing.
Bluffing in the context of games of chance or skill typically involve misleading your
opponent into thinking your odds of winning are either greater or more unlikely than your
opponent. More generally, bluffing in this context involves misleading your opponent into
thinking you are adopting a certain strategy of game-play that you are not. This is usually done
to secure greater economic or strategic advantage over the opponent. Bluffing in poker has
amassed a sizable literature, whereas games of skill like checkers and chess have received scant
attention in research. Bluffing in poker often entails more subtle forms of deception such as
feigning that one has worse cards than one actually does, whereas games of skill may often

employ false moves to mislead the other player into committing to a desired course of action
more advantageous to the bluffer. Research on bluffing in poker has suggested three things: (1)
it is morally permissible to deceive others in this context (Van Wyk, 1990), (2) people do not
bluff according to rules of logic which stymie learning theories (Rapoport, Erev, Abraham &
Olson, 1997), and (3) people are often unaware of when they are being bluffed (Ekman, 1993).
Research on deception detection has shown that people with dysphoria are better at
detecting bluffing behaviours when the lie has important social consequences. And pertinent to
bluffing in poker, Rounding and Jacobson (2011) found that individuals with higher levels of
dysphoria were associated with an implicit measure no more accurate at discerning when
profession poker players were bluffing. But when using an implicit measure of liking,
participants tended to dislike bluffers significantly more than non-bluffers. This suggests that
dysphoria may be a proximal and sufficient cause for problem gambling.
In summary, bluffing can take many forms, depending on the context. Research has
shown that bluffing tends to be effective, even against experts, and but individual differences in
deception detection may enhance accuracy at detecting bluffing.