A Personal Model of Trumpery: Linguistic Deception Detection in a Real-World High-Stakes Setting

The Language of (Non)Replicable Social Science

Using publicly available data from 299 preregistered replications from the social sciences, we found that the language used to describe a study can predict its replicability above and beyond a large set of controls related to the article characteristics, study design and results, author information, and replication effort. To understand why, we analyzed the textual differences between replicable and nonreplicable studies. Our findings suggest that the language in replicable studies is transparent and confident, written in a detailed and complex manner, and generally exhibits markers of truthful communication, possibly demonstrating the researchers' confidence in the study. Nonreplicable studies, however, are vaguely written and have markers of persuasion techniques, such as the use of positivity and clout. Thus, our findings allude to the possibility that authors of nonreplicable studies are more likely to make an effort, through their writing, to persuade readers of their (possibly weaker) results.

The better to fool you with: Deception and self-deception

Deception is used by plants, animals, and humans to increase their fitness by persuading others of false beliefs that benefit the self, thereby creating evolutionary pressure to detect deception and avoid providing such unearned benefits to others. Self-deception can disrupt detection efforts by eliminating cognitive load and idiosyncratic deceptive cues, raising the possibility that persuading others of a false belief might be more achievable after first persuading oneself. If people self-deceive in service of their persuasive goals, self-deception should emerge whenever persuasion is paramount and hence should be evident in information sharing, generalized beliefs about the self, and intergroup relations. The mechanism, costs, and benefits of self-deceptive biases are explored from this evolutionary perspective.

The Science of Lie Detection by Verbal Cues: What Are the Prospects for Its Practical Applicability?

There is agreement among researchers that no simple verbal cues to deception detectable by humans have been demonstrated. This paper examines the evidence for the most prominent current methods, critically considers the prevailing research strategy, proposes a taxonomy of lie detection methods and concludes that two common types of approach are unlikely to succeed. An approach to lie detection is advocated that derives both from psychological science and common sense: When an interviewee produces a statement that contradicts either a previous statement by the same person or other information the authorities have, it will in many cases be obvious to interviewer and interviewee that at least one of the statements is a lie and at the very least the credibility of the witness is reduced. The literature on Strategic Use of Evidence shows that features of interviews that foster such revelatory and self-trapping situations have been established to be a free account and the introduction of independent information late and gradually into the proceedings, and tactics based on these characteristics constitute the best current general advice for practitioners. If any other approach 1 day challenges this status quo, it is likely to be highly efficient automated systems.