Stacked list (psychology)

A stacked list is where an individual buries a particular item, phrase, question or example that they are interested in either confirming or using, in a list of red herring or mundane items.

This can help to avoid the situation of stacked or bias questions, especially closed-ended questions which would allow an individual to know what the right answer is and to prevent yes-no false paradigms occurring.

This is especially useful as it prevents leading and thus prevents false conclusions being formed.

Usage
Often, individuals will ask questions that are closed-ended, for example: "Did you see the suspect yesterday?", however, not only does this risk priming the individual, it also risks leading them to the wrong conclusion, and allows hostile individuals to feed you information you want to hear (a form of self-confirmation bias), even potentially informing them of what you know or what you suspect.

A stacked list would read like "Did you see the suspect, yesterday, today, two days ago or a week ago?". The reason the list is stacked is because all the other suggestions are false and only one of them is true. A stacked list operates similarly to how a suspect line-up and identity parade would work.

By forming a list of numerous options, it prevents you from priming or leading an individual, prevents hostile individuals from knowing which list item to pick and even will make hostile individuals think that you're barking up the wrong tree or have less idea than you actually do.

If individuals 'correctly' pick out the item you suspected from a stacked list, it has greater confirmation than if it was from a question based on just the item itself.

Counteraction
Sometimes it may be necessary to avoid a stacked list (an example might be during an exam) in order to formulate the correct answer, or to avoid unfair grilling. Stacked lists suffer from the fact the other options are less plausible and ergo the correct answer is more noticeable if there isn't a lot of thought put into them.

Individuals should employ process of elimination to deduce which ones are intrinsically or blatantly false, increaing the probability of a correct guess (eliminating 2 options out of a 4 item list increases your probability of a correct guess by 50/50), using secondary data sifting techniques on the remaining options to give a hint as to which one is more likely.

If the list giver is in person, then observing subconscious cues will clue you in as to which list item is most likely the correct one (for example, made-up list items may take longer to formulate, or an emotional reaction might follow the 'correct' one followed by neutrality for the rest). Subconscious cues aren't always consistent across the board, and in a very talented individual, red herring subconscious cues may be employed to confuse you (this generally isn't the case unless the individual is a psychopath or someone who has studied such psychological/observation cues, such as an intelligence agent).