Youth deception: Malingering traumatic stress

To explore how youths malinger symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), college students completed the Trauma Symptom Inventory (TSI) under standard instructions (honest condition). Then, after learning the symptomatology of traumatic stress, they completed the TSI a second time attempting to fake symptoms of PTSD (deception condition). Motivation level was manipulated: 100 students were given course credits, allowing them to avoid writing a research paper, while 50 students were paid and given the incentive of bonus money for successfully faking PTSD symptoms. Cutoff values were applied to the validity scores to identify students who were malingering by exaggerating or by over-endorsing symptoms. Overall, a majority of participants (57%) responded in a manner that fabricated symptoms of PTSD in the deception condition. However, many of the fabricators (45%) did not pass the validity scales and were identified as malingerers. In addition, most of the successful malingers (66%) also over-endorsed the symptoms of dysphoria and reduced internal resources. This pattern of responding suggests that the malingering youths did not selectively endorse only symptoms of traumatic stress. Hence, some youths are capable of using minimal, publicly available information to fake symptoms of PTSD, regardless of motivation.