Paraverbal indicators of deception: a meta-analytic synthesis

Cues to deception in context: response latency/gaps in denials and blame shifting

Over 40 years of work on lying in psychology and communication has investigated numerous 'cues to deception'- the subtle signals people show when they are lying. One of these cues to deception is 'response latency' or the gap that occurs between questions and the lying response. The current investigation uses the methodology of conversation analysis to re-consider the question of response latency in the context of lying. Drawing on data from two naturalistic sources, the television shows COPS and the Jeremy Kyle Show, this investigation analyses response latencies in order to show the regular organization of gaps between turns in both lies and non-lies. The current investigation demonstrates that in blame shifting turns which are lies, any gaps between turns result from a display of upcoming 'trouble', rather than being related to lying per se. The investigation highlights the need to analyse lies in the contexts in which they are told, taking prior and subsequent talk into account.

Content Versus Source Cue Information as a Basis for Credibility Judgments

Basic assumptions of dual-process theories are used to explain the process of credibility attribution. Three experiments test the assumption that high task involvement leads to intensive processing of content information, whereas low task involvement leads to the use of noncontent information like source cues when people make credibility judgments. In Experiment 1, as predicted, when task involvement is low, only source attractiveness influences credibility attributions; when task involvement is high, content information also influences credibility attributions. Experiments 2 and 3 replicate these results with different source cue and message content manipulations. These findings demonstrate the fruitfulness of applying basic assumptions of dual-process theories to the field of deceptive communication research. Practical implications for forensic credibility assessment are outlined.

Sex Differences in Beliefs about Cues to Deception

Sex differences in beliefs among Japanese students about cues to deception were explored. 171 participants (91 women, 80 men) read a scenario in which a protagonist caused a fatal traffic accident and told a lie to avoid responsibility. Then participants rated how the protagonist's behaviors would change when lying. Women participants believed significantly more than men that a liar shows body cues (e.g., body touching, biting lips) associated with anxiety, and that a liar has unsuccessful impression management (e.g., fewer smiles, fewer facial expressions). Furthermore, the women's scores also indicated that a liar would increase the amount of information (e.g., longer response length, gestures) and show more nonfluent speech (e.g., speech disturbances, inconsistency of speech contents).

Increasing cognitive load to facilitate lie detection: the benefit of recalling an event in reverse order

In two experiments, we tested the hypotheses that (a) the difference between liars and truth tellers will be greater when interviewees report their stories in reverse order than in chronological order, and (b) instructing interviewees to recall their stories in reverse order will facilitate detecting deception. In Experiment 1, 80 mock suspects told the truth or lied about a staged event and did or did not report their stories in reverse order. The reverse order interviews contained many more cues to deceit than the control interviews. In Experiment 2, 55 police officers watched a selection of the videotaped interviews of Experiment 1 and made veracity judgements. Requesting suspects to convey their stories in reverse order improved police observers' ability to detect deception and did not result in a response bias.