Definition of deception
An act intended to foster in another, a belief that the deceiver considers false (e.g. if “deceiver” doesn’t consider what they are saying is false, they are not being deceptive)
What is the key to determining what is deceptive or not?
Conscious deliberate intent
What is the duel nature of deception?
Communication of specific information and meta-communication about the truth value of the content
Deception Cues vs. Leakage Cues
Deception Cues: information that gives away the falsehood
Leakage Cues: information that gives away the true information
What is cue competition?
When verbal and nonverbal signs carry implications that are at odds
What is detection apprehension?
The fear of being caught at telling a lie.
What is the Othello Error?
It occurs when a lie catcher fails to consider that a truthful person who is under stress may appear to be lying; truthful people may be afraid of being disbelieved.
Underlying emotional factors in Deception
- Fear (detection apprehension)
- Guilt (deception guilt)
- Excitement (“duping delight”) - some people take pleasure in being deceptive
Most lies fail due to either inadequate preparation or the interference of emotions
Theoretical approaches to deception
A) Attempted control - lacks spontaneity and is overly-planned. This is one way deceptive people can come across
B) Arousal - lying causes people to be aroused and change their speech rate & pitch, their pupils dilate, they increase gesture use, change their gaze, etc.
C) Affect - when the stakes are high and a lot can be lost. “Microexpressions” leak out before people knowingly turn them off.
D) Cognitive load - keeping your story straight can be hard
Evidence for humans being poor lie detectors
Vrij (2000)
- reviewed 40 studies. 67% accuracy rate for detecting truths, 44% accuracy for detecting lies.
- “Truth bias” - we assume people are telling us the truth.
Bond & DePaulo (2006)
- results from 206 reports and 24,483 judges
- people achieve an average of 54% correct lie-truth judgments
- correctly classifying 47% of lies as deceptive and 61% of truths as non deceptive
Bond & DePaulo (2008)
- 142 studies reviewed with 19,801 judges of deception
- mean accuracy of 54.05% in discriminating lies from truths
CONCLUSION: People do not do much better than chance at detecting deception, even though people typically report extremely high confidence in their detection ability; this is misplaced confidence.
How good are the professionals?
- In the study where students had to lie to cops about having a pair of headphones, their accuracy rates were low.
- 60% accurate AT BEST
- Cops’ confidence for detection was high
- Correlation between confidence and actual accuracy was nearly 0
What is the “Truth Bias”
- People are especially likely to judge familiar vs. unfamiliar persons as truthful.
- “My partner has been honest with me in the past, therefore she/he is being truthful now” - the truth bias won’t pick up on cues
Detecting deception in children
- 3-7 yr olds induced to lie with a cool toy
- They haven’t fully developed their deception skills, but judges could not accurately detect the liars based on nonverbal cues
Is anyone good at detecting lies?
- no compelling evidence for this
- someone in the 86th percentile of detection ability is only 1% better than someone in the 16th percentile
Why are humans poor lie detectors?
Vrij et al. (2010)
- People lack the motivation to catch liars (ostrich effect)
- Absence of Pinoccio’s Nose effect - no single cue (nose growing) that indicates someone is lying
- Countermeasures - people attempt to deliberately conceal their lying qualities in high stakes situations to throw people off
- Embedded lies - lies embedded with the truth, don’t know how mud is true and how much is a lie. Nonverbals won’t change when you’re partially telling the truth
- No adequate feedback - no immediate feedback about how well we’re doing at detecting a lie. You may never know if they’re lying or not.
- A violation of conversational rules
- There are simply just good liars out there
Common errors in lie detecting
- Examining the wrong cues (using heuristics, or short cuts i.e. liars look away, fidget, or smile) *Liars will actually increase eye contact to try to make people accept their lie.
- Overemphasis on nonverbal cues - you should focus more on verbal inconsistencies
- Othello Error
- Neglect of interpersonal differences - some people just make more eye contact than others; some people are naturally more fidgety
- Over confidence in lie detection skills - makes you jump to early conclusions and have low levels of vigilance. Better to be skeptical about your skill
Cues significantly associated with deception
- Provide fewer details
- Person makes less sense
- Internal discrepancies (story starts to slightly change)
- Repetitions
- Less verbal/vocal involvement
- Fewer illustrators
- Less verb immediacy
- Pupil dilation
- Increased vocal pitch (from stress) and very difficult to control so it’s usually a pretty good indicator
Cues NOT associated with deception
- Response duration
- Eye contact
- Speech disturbances (stutter start and filled pauses)
- Smiling
- Silent pauses
- Head nods
- Response latency
- Shrugs
- Shifting posture
- Speech rate
- Foot and leg movements
- Self fidgeting
Detecting deceptive communication
- Nurses watched videos and some instructed to tell truth about video, other instructed to tell lie about it
- Liars used fewer illustrators, hand movements, more ah-speech disturbances, and longer response latencies than the truth tellers
- Using these 4 NV behaviors, 71% of truth tellers and 85% of liars were correctly classified.
Microexpressions
PAY ATTENTION TO THEM!
- It is a momentary expression of facial emotion
- Squelched almost immediately
- Insight into underlying emotional state
