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Hein FE, Leue A. Concealing Untrustworthiness: The Role of Conflict Monitoring in a Social Deception Task. Front Psychol 2021; 12:718334. [PMID: 34489824 PMCID: PMC8417705 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.718334] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/31/2021] [Accepted: 07/27/2021] [Indexed: 11/23/2022] Open
Abstract
Deception studies emphasize the important role of event-related potentials (ERPs) to uncover deceptive behavior based on underlying neuro-cognitive processes. The role of conflict monitoring as indicated by the frontal N2 component during truthful and deceptive responses was investigated in an adapted Concealed Information Test (CIT). Previously memorized pictures of faces should either be indicated as truthfully trustworthy, truthfully untrustworthy or trustworthy while concealing the actual untrustworthiness (untrustworthy-probe). Mean, baseline-to-peak and peak-to-peak amplitudes were calculated to examine the robustness of ERP findings across varying quantification techniques. Data of 30 participants (15 female; age: M = 23.73 years, SD = 4.09) revealed longer response times and lower correct rates for deceptive compared to truthful trustworthy responses. The frontal N2 amplitude was more negative for untrustworthy-probe and truthful untrustworthy compared to truthful trustworthy stimuli when measured as mean or baseline-to-peak amplitude. Results suggest that deception evokes conflict monitoring and ERP quantifications are differentially sensitive to a-priori hypotheses.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fee-Elisabeth Hein
- Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany
| | - Anja Leue
- Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany
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Wagner-Altendorf TA, van der Lugt AH, Banfield JF, Meyer C, Rohrbach C, Heldmann M, Münte TF. The Electrocortical Signature of Successful and Unsuccessful Deception in a Face-to-Face Social Interaction. Front Hum Neurosci 2020; 14:277. [PMID: 32765242 PMCID: PMC7379373 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2020.00277] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/24/2020] [Accepted: 06/18/2020] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Deceptive behavior, and the evaluation of others' behavior as truthful or deceptive, are crucial aspects of human social interaction. We report a study investigating two participants in a social interaction, performing a deception task. The first participant, the "informant," made true or false autobiographical statements. The second participant, the "detective," then classified these statements as truth or lie. Behavioral data showed that detectives performed slightly above chance and were better at correctly identifying true as compared with deceptive statements. This presumably reflects the "truth bias": the finding that individuals are more likely to classify others' statements as truthful than as deceptive - even when informed that a lie is as likely to be told as the truth. Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded from the informant. Event-related potential (ERP) analysis revealed a smaller contingent negative variation (CNV) preceding "convincing" statements (statements classified as true by the detective) compared to "unconvincing" statements (statements classified as lie by the detective) - irrespective of whether the statements were actually truthful or deceptive. This finding suggests a distinct electrocortical signature of "successful" compared to "unsuccessful" deceptive statements. One possible explanation is that the pronounced CNV indicates the individuals' higher "cognitive load" when processing unconvincing statements.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Arie H van der Lugt
- Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands
| | - Jane F Banfield
- Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands
| | - Carsten Meyer
- Department of Neuropsychology, Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany
| | - Caterina Rohrbach
- Department of Neuropsychology, Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany
| | - Marcus Heldmann
- Department of Neurology, University of Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany.,Institute of Psychology II, University of Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany
| | - Thomas F Münte
- Department of Neurology, University of Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany.,Institute of Psychology II, University of Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany
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The effects of foreign language anxiety, nervousness and cognitive load on foreign language lying: Evidence from Chinese-English bilinguals. ACTA PSYCHOLOGICA SINICA 2020. [DOI: 10.3724/sp.j.1041.2020.00861] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
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Mei D, Zhang W, Yin L. Neural responses of in-group "favoritism" and out-group "discrimination" toward moral behaviors. Neuropsychologia 2020; 139:107375. [PMID: 32027920 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107375] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/11/2019] [Revised: 01/02/2020] [Accepted: 02/02/2020] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
People hate being deceived. However, what would it be if lies come from in-group members compared with that from out-group members? In the current Electroencephalography (EEG) study, we recruited thirty-six participants to play a modified estimator and advisor game to investigate the mental and neural processes to lies and truth conveyed by in-group and out-group members. At the behavioral level, lies are less morally acceptable, arose less positive emotion, and made participants distribute less money to the advisor in a dictator game. Meanwhile, participants liked the in-group university more than the out-group university and they thought they were more similar to in-group members than to out-group members. However, there were no significant interactions of group type (i.e., in-group and out-group) and message type (i.e., lies and truth) in the aforementioned behavioral assessments. At the neural level, significant interaction effects were found in the parietal N1 and P3 amplitude. More importantly, no significant N1 and P3 amplitude differences between in-group lies and truth were found, while outgroup lies elicited larger P3 amplitude than outgroup truth and out-group truth elicited larger N1 amplitude than outgroup lies. What's more, P3 amplitude differences between lies vs. truth positively correlated with fairness scores only in the in-group condition but not in the out-group condition. Current study showed that the P3 component was sensitive in capturing subtle differences when participants were processing different types of lies and truth that could not be captured by behavioral measurements. Besides, the fairness trait modulated the in-group bias related P3 patterns. The current study provides insight into the neurobiological mechanism underlying the mental process of in-group and out-group lies and truth, and suggests individuals' tendency of general in-group favoritism and out-group discrimination toward moral behaviors.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dongmei Mei
- Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Social Cognitive Neuroscience and Mental Health, and Department of Psychology, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510006, China
| | - Wenjian Zhang
- Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Social Cognitive Neuroscience and Mental Health, and Department of Psychology, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510006, China
| | - Lijun Yin
- Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Social Cognitive Neuroscience and Mental Health, and Department of Psychology, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510006, China.
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Internal cost of spontaneous deception revealed by ERPs and EEG spectral perturbations. Sci Rep 2019; 9:5402. [PMID: 30931993 PMCID: PMC6443694 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-41962-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/12/2018] [Accepted: 03/21/2019] [Indexed: 11/26/2022] Open
Abstract
Abundant literature has studied the behavioral and neural correlates of deception, but little research has focused on the internal cost of spontaneous deception. In the present study, the event-related potential and event-related spectral perturbations techniques were used to measure the internal cost of spontaneous deception by having participants perform a sender–receiver task in which they decided whether to send deceptive messages to increase their payoff from the task. Several important main findings emerged from this study. We observed a reward positivity (RewP) after senders sent the message, suggesting an integration of reward with associated cost after response in our task. Furthermore, spontaneous deception decreased the amplitude of the RewP and power in the delta and beta bands, whereas it increased the amplitude of power in the theta band, indicating that deception carried an internal cost that devalued individuals’ rewards.
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Leng H, Wang Y, Li Q, Yang L, Sun Y. Sophisticated Deception in Junior Middle School Students: An ERP Study. Front Psychol 2019; 9:2675. [PMID: 30687155 PMCID: PMC6336891 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02675] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/25/2018] [Accepted: 12/13/2018] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Sophisticated deception refers to the deception of others based on inferences of their mental states (e.g., answering honestly when inferring that the other will not believe their answer). Studying the brain mechanism of sophisticated deception in junior middle school students can provide physiological evidence for deception detection and deceptive ability measurement. Sixteen junior middle school students were asked to engage in different trial types (i.e., instructed truth/lie and chosen truth/lie), during which we recorded their response times (RT) along with electroencephalographic data to calculate event-related potentials (ERPs). We observed significant differences in amplitude [N2, P3, N450, and medial frontal negativity (MFN)] between chosen reactions (sophisticated deception and simple deception) and instructed reactions (instructed truth and instructed lie) in both the stimulus presentation and feedback stages. In the former, the task scores of participants in the chosen condition were significantly and positively correlated with the N2 amplitude over the central brain area during sophisticated deception. In the latter, the task scores of participants in the chosen condition were negatively correlated with the MFN amplitude over the left frontal and left frontocentral regions. Overall, deception intention, rather than simply making counterfactual statements, appears to underlie the increased demand for cognitive control in deceivers. This can be attributed to deceivers' need to strongly consider their opponent's mental state-the better the deceivers' deceptive ability, the more they will make conjectures about the mental state of their opponent with sophisticated deception and monitor conflict; the less conflict they experience while answering honestly with the intention to deceive, the more conflict may arise when the results of their deception are inconsistent with these conjectures.
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Affiliation(s)
- Haizhou Leng
- School of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, China
| | - Yanrong Wang
- School of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, China
| | - Qian Li
- Xingtai Special Education School, Xingtai, China
| | - Lizhu Yang
- School of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, China
| | - Yan Sun
- School of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, China
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Electrophysiological markers of working memory usage as an index for truth-based lies. COGNITIVE AFFECTIVE & BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE 2018; 18:1089-1104. [PMID: 30022430 DOI: 10.3758/s13415-018-0624-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
People prefer to lie using altered truthful events from memory, perhaps because doing so can increase their credibility while reducing cognitive and working memory (WM) load. One possible way to counter such deceptive behavior is to track WM usage, since fabricating coherent lies or managing between truth and lies is likely to involve heavy WM load. In this study, participants memorized a list of words in the study session and used these old words to provide deceptive answers when cued later, in the testing session. Our behavioral results showed that people needed more time to make a deceptive response during the execution stage, and this prolonged deceptive reaction time (RT) was negatively correlated with each participant's WM capacity. Event-related potential findings showed a more negative-going frontal amplitude between the lie and truth conditions during the preparation stage, suggesting that WM preparatory processes can be detected long before a deceptive response is verbalized. Furthermore, we observed a larger positive frontal-central amplitude during the execution stage, which was negatively correlated with participants' lie-truth RT differences, suggesting that participants' efficiency in producing deceptive responses can be readily traced electrophysiologically. Together, these findings suggest that WM capacity and preparation are crucial to efficient lying and that their related electrophysiological signatures can potentially be used to uncover deceptive behaviors.
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Fu H, Qiu W, Ma H, Ma Q. Neurocognitive mechanisms underlying deceptive hazard evaluation: An event-related potentials investigation. PLoS One 2017; 12:e0182892. [PMID: 28793344 PMCID: PMC5549904 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0182892] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/28/2016] [Accepted: 07/26/2017] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Deceptive behavior is common in human social interactions. Researchers have been trying to uncover the cognitive process and neural basis underlying deception due to its theoretical and practical significance. We used Event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the neural correlates of deception when the participants completed a hazard judgment task. Pictures conveying or not conveying hazard information were presented to the participants who were then requested to discriminate the hazard content (safe or hazardous) and make a response corresponding to the cues (truthful or deceptive). Behavioral and electrophysiological data were recorded during the entire experiment. Results showed that deceptive responses, compared to truthful responses, were associated with longer reaction time (RT), lower accuracy, increased N2 and reduced late positive potential (LPP), suggesting a cognitively more demanding process to respond deceptively. The decrement in LPP correlated negatively with the increment in RT for deceptive relative to truthful responses, regardless of hazard content. In addition, hazardous information evoked larger N1 and P300 than safe information, reflecting an early processing bias and a later evaluative categorization process based on motivational significance, respectively. Finally, the interaction between honesty (truthful/deceptive) and safety (safe/hazardous) on accuracy and LPP indicated that deceptive responses towards safe information required more effort than deceptive responses towards hazardous information. Overall, these results demonstrate the neurocognitive substrates underlying deception about hazard information.
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Affiliation(s)
- Huijian Fu
- School of Management, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, Guangdong, People's Republic of China
- Laboratory of Managerial Psychology and Behavior, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, Guangdong, People's Republic of China
| | - Wenwei Qiu
- School of Management, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, People's Republic of China
| | - Haiying Ma
- School of Management, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, Guangdong, People's Republic of China
- Laboratory of Managerial Psychology and Behavior, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, Guangdong, People's Republic of China
| | - Qingguo Ma
- Institute of Neural Management Sciences, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, People's Republic of China
- Neuromanagement Laboratory, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, People's Republic of China
- * E-mail:
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Nahari T, Breska A, Elber L, Klein Selle N, Ben-Shakhar G. The External Validity of the Concealed Information Test: The Effect of Choosing to Commit a Mock Crime. APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 2016. [DOI: 10.1002/acp.3304] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/11/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Tal Nahari
- Department of Psychology; Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Jerusalem Israel
| | - Assaf Breska
- Department of Psychology; Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Jerusalem Israel
| | - Lotem Elber
- Department of Psychology; Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Jerusalem Israel
| | - Nathalie Klein Selle
- Department of Psychology; Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Jerusalem Israel
- Department of Clinical Psychology; University of Amsterdam; Amsterdam The Netherlands
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Suchotzki K, Crombez G, Smulders FT, Meijer E, Verschuere B. The cognitive mechanisms underlying deception: An event-related potential study. Int J Psychophysiol 2015; 95:395-405. [DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2015.01.010] [Citation(s) in RCA: 33] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/27/2014] [Revised: 12/30/2014] [Accepted: 01/28/2015] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
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Panasiti MS, Pavone EF, Mancini A, Merla A, Grisoni L, Aglioti SM. The motor cost of telling lies: electrocortical signatures and personality foundations of spontaneous deception. Soc Neurosci 2014; 9:573-89. [PMID: 24979665 DOI: 10.1080/17470919.2014.934394] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/25/2022]
Abstract
Although universal, lying is generally considered immoral behavior. Most neuroscience studies on lying sanction or instruct deceptive behaviors and thus might fail to acknowledge the significance of lie-related moral conflicts. By combining electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings with a novel paradigm in which participants decided freely whether to deceive another person, we have generated indices of the cognitive (reaction times and stimulus-locked event-related components) and moral (readiness potential and its correlations with deception-related personality traits) cost of spontaneous deception. Our data fail to support the consensus that deception is cognitively more demanding than truth telling, suggesting that spontaneous deception, as opposed to lying out of requirement, might not mandate additional cognitive workload. Interestingly, lying was associated with decreased motor readiness, an event-related potential (ERP) component that is linked to motor preparation of self-determined actions and modulated when we face moral dilemmas. Notably, this reduction was less extensive in manipulative participants and greater in those who cared highly about their impression management. Our study expands on previous findings on deception by associating a cortical marker of reduced preparation to act with individual differences in moral cognition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maria Serena Panasiti
- a Department of Molecular Medicine , University of Rome "La Sapienza" , Rome , Italy
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Luo YJ, Sun SY, Mai XQ, Gu RL, Zhang HJ. Outcome Evaluation in Decision Making: ERP Studies. ACTA ACUST UNITED AC 2010. [DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-15423-2_16] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/19/2023]
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