Deception is associated with reduced social connection

Lies can have major consequences if undetected. Research to date has focused primarily on the consequences of deception for receivers once lies are discovered. We advance deception research and relationship science by studying the social consequences of deception for the sender-even if their lies remain undetected. In a correlational study of video conversations (Study 1; N = 776), an experimental study of text conversations (Study 2; N = 416), and a survey of dispositional tendencies (Study 3; N = 399), we find consistent evidence that people who lie tend to assume that others are lying too, and this impedes their ability to form social connections. The findings provide insight into how (dis)honesty and loneliness may go together, and suggest that lies-even when undetected-harm our relationships.

Hedge Fund Managers With Psychopathic Tendencies Make for Worse Investors

It is widely assumed that psychopathic personality traits promote success in high-powered, competitive contexts such as financial investment. By contrast, empirical studies find that psychopathic leaders can be charming and persuasive, but poor performers who mismanage, bully, and engage in unethical behavior. By coding nonverbal behaviors displayed in semistructured interviews, we identified the psychopathic, Machiavellian, and narcissistic tendencies in 101 hedge fund managers, and examined whether these traits were associated with financial performance over the course of 10 diverse years of economic volatility (2005-2015). Managers with greater psychopathic tendencies produced lower absolute returns than their less psychopathic peers, and managers with greater narcissistic traits produced decreased risk-adjusted returns. The discussion focuses on the costs of Dark Triad traits in financial investment, and organizational leadership more generally.

Virtues, Vices, and Political Influence in the U.S. Senate

What qualities make a political leader more influential or less influential? Philosophers, political scientists, and psychologists have puzzled over this question, positing two opposing routes to political power—one driven by human virtues, such as courage and wisdom, and the other driven by vices, such as Machiavellianism and psychopathy. By coding nonverbal behaviors displayed in political speeches, we assessed the virtues and vices of 151 U.S. senators. We found that virtuous senators became more influential after they assumed leadership roles, whereas senators who displayed behaviors consistent with vices—particularly psychopathy—became no more influential or even less influential after they assumed leadership roles. Our results inform a long-standing debate about the role of morality and ethics in leadership and have important implications for electing effective government officials. Citizens would be wise to consider a candidate’s virtue in casting their votes, which might increase the likelihood that elected officials will have genuine concern for their constituents and simultaneously promote cooperation and progress in government.

Some Evidence for Unconscious Lie Detection

To maximize survival and reproductive success, primates evolved the tendency to tell lies and the ability to accurately detect them. Despite the obvious advantage of detecting lies accurately, conscious judgments of veracity are only slightly more accurate than chance. However, findings in forensic psychology, neuroscience, and primatology suggest that lies can be accurately detected when less-conscious mental processes (as opposed to more-conscious mental processes) are used. We predicted that observing someone tell a lie would automatically activate cognitive concepts associated with deception, and observing someone tell the truth would activate concepts associated with truth. In two experiments, we demonstrated that indirect measures of deception detection are significantly more accurate than direct measures. These findings provide a new lens through which to reconsider old questions and approach new investigations of human lie detection.

Prime time news: the influence of primed positive and negative emotion on susceptibility to false memories

We examined the relation between emotion and susceptibility to misinformation using a novel paradigm, the ambiguous stimuli affective priming (ASAP) paradigm. Participants (N = 88) viewed ambiguous neutral images primed either at encoding or retrieval to be interpreted as either highly positive or negative (or neutral/not primed). After viewing the images, they either were asked misleading or non-leading questions. Following a delay, memory accuracy for the original images was assessed. Results indicated that any emotional priming at encoding led to a higher susceptibility to misinformation relative to priming at recall. In particular, inducing a negative interpretation of the image at encoding led to an increased susceptibility of false memories for major misinformation (an entire object not actually present in the scene). In contrast, this pattern was reversed when priming was used at recall; a negative reinterpretation of the image decreased memory distortion relative to unprimed images. These findings suggest that, with precise experimental control, the experience of emotion at event encoding, in particular, is implicated in false memory susceptibility.

The eyes don't have it: lie detection and Neuro-Linguistic Programming

Proponents of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) claim that certain eye-movements are reliable indicators of lying. According to this notion, a person looking up to their right suggests a lie whereas looking up to their left is indicative of truth telling. Despite widespread belief in this claim, no previous research has examined its validity. In Study 1 the eye movements of participants who were lying or telling the truth were coded, but did not match the NLP patterning. In Study 2 one group of participants were told about the NLP eye-movement hypothesis whilst a second control group were not. Both groups then undertook a lie detection test. No significant differences emerged between the two groups. Study 3 involved coding the eye movements of both liars and truth tellers taking part in high profile press conferences. Once again, no significant differences were discovered. Taken together the results of the three studies fail to support the claims of NLP. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Are memories for sexually traumatic events "special"? A within-subjects investigation of trauma and memory in a clinical sample

According to a long-standing clinical tradition, sexually traumatic experiences are processed and recalled differently from other experiences, often leading to memory impairment. In this study, we compared the characteristics of traumatic memories for sexual violence and two other types of emotional experiences. N=44 women recruited from a local sexual trauma agency were asked to recall and describe three autobiographical events: sexual abuse/assault, a non-sexual trauma, and a positive emotional event. The characteristics of the three memory types were compared on both subjective and objective measures. Further, the potential influences of level of traumatic impact and dissociation were assessed. Results indicated that memories for sexual trauma were not impaired or fragmented relative to other memories. Instead, memories for sexual trauma were associated with a remarkably high level of vividness, detail, and sensory components. Further, high levels of traumatic impact were not associated with memory impairment. Implications for the ongoing traumatic memory debate are discussed.

Reading between the lies: identifying concealed and falsified emotions in universal facial expressions

The widespread supposition that aspects of facial communication are uncontrollable and can betray a deceiver's true emotion has received little empirical attention. We examined the presence of inconsistent emotional expressions and "microexpressions" (1/25-1/5 of a second) in genuine and deceptive facial expressions. Participants viewed disgusting, sad, frightening, happy, and neutral images, responding to each with a genuine or deceptive (simulated, neutralized, or masked) expression. Each 1/30-s frame (104,550 frames in 697 expressions) was analyzed for the presence and duration of universal expressions, microexpressions, and blink rate. Relative to genuine emotions, masked emotions were associated with more inconsistent expressions and an elevated blink rate; neutralized emotions showed a decreased blink rate. Negative emotions were more difficult to falsify than happiness. Although untrained observers performed only slightly above chance at detecting deception, inconsistent emotional leakage occurred in 100% of participants at least once and lasted longer than the current definition of a microexpression suggests. Microexpressions were exhibited by 21.95% of participants in 2% of all expressions, and in the upper or lower face only.