The effect of probing on deceivers and truthtellers

Cues to Lying May be Deceptive: Speaker and Listener Behaviour in an Interactive Game of Deception

Are the cues that speakers produce when lying the same cues that listeners attend to when attempting to detect deceit? We used a two-person interactive game to explore the production and perception of speech and nonverbal cues to lying. In each game turn, participants viewed pairs of images, with the location of some treasure indicated to the speaker but not to the listener. The speaker described the location of the treasure, with the objective of misleading the listener about its true location; the listener attempted to locate the treasure, based on their judgement of the speaker’s veracity. In line with previous comprehension research, listeners’ responses suggest that they attend primarily to behaviours associated with increased mental difficulty, perhaps because lying, under a cognitive hypothesis, is thought to cause an increased cognitive load. Moreover, a mouse-tracking analysis suggests that these judgements are made quickly, while the speakers’ utterances are still unfolding. However, there is a surprising mismatch between listeners and speakers: When producing false statements, speakers are less likely to produce the cues that listeners associate with lying. This production pattern is in keeping with an attempted control hypothesis, whereby liars may take into account listeners’ expectations and correspondingly manipulate their behaviour to avoid detection.

Cues to deception

Do people behave differently when they are lying compared with when they are telling the truth? The combined results of 1,338 estimates of 158 cues to deception are reported. Results show that in some ways, liars are less forthcoming than truth tellers, and they tell less compelling tales. They also make a more negative impression and are more tense. Their stories include fewer ordinary imperfections and unusual contents. However, many behaviors showed no discernible links, or only weak links, to deceit. Cues to deception were more pronounced when people were motivated to succeed, especially when the motivations were identity relevant rather than monetary or material. Cues to deception were also stronger when lies were about transgressions.

LINGUISTIC STYLES IN DECEPTIVE COMMUNICATION: DUBITATIVE AMBIGUITY AND ELLIPTIC ELUDING IN PACKAGED LIES

This paper was aimed at addressing the topic of communicative styles of deception. University students were asked to describe a picture with varying truth/lie conditions. In accordance with their perception or being deliberately against it, the participant could: tell the truth (T); lie to an acquiescent recipient (L1); or lie to a suspicious recipient (L2). The goal was to investigate whether or not different linguistic styles could be correlated to the cognitive complexity of the task as regards the truth bias or lie bias of the recipient. Specifically, two sets of linguistic aspects – micro and macro structural – were analyzed. In the former, indices were considered as words (arguments number, repetitions and interruptions, fluency and fluency disorder indices), predicates (number, nominal/predicative construction, and personal/impersonal structure), pronouns and adverbial forms. In the latter, the structural variations of the standard phrase, utterances' complexity, spatial organization of utterances, and speech organization were analyzed. Results showed that participants used speech to shield from reality and chose different strategies; in the L1 condition, participants resorted to ambiguity and prolixity (“cuttlefish effect”); on the contrary, in the L2 condition they used concise assertiveness and elliptic eluding strategies (“chameleon effect”).

Deception detection: interrogators' and observers' decoding of consecutive statements

This study is an examination of two forensically important but previously neglected issues in interpersonal deception. First, which cues do lie catchers-who have access to repeated interrogations-pay attention to in order to detect deception? Second, do face-to-face interacting interrogators differ from noninteracting observers in terms of how they perceive a suspect? After watching a staged event, 24 suspects (12 liars and 12 truth tellers) were interrogated three times over a period of 11 days. After the final interrogation, the veracity of each suspect was assessed by his or her interrogator and by 6 observers who had watched the interrogations on video only. The results of the experiment showed that consistency over time was by far the most commonly used cue for justifying veracity judgments. Critically, the predictive accuracy for this cue was alarmingly low. As opposed to results from previous research, the interrogators used verbal cues to a significantly greater extent than did the observers. Furthermore, a probing effect was shown (i.e., probed suspects were perceived as significantly more honest than nonprobed suspects). Finally, limited support for a previously reported honesty effect was obtained (i.e., that interrogators perceive suspects to be more honest than do observers).