DECEPTION & DECEPTION DETECTION

Deception quiz

“Deceiving others is an essential part of everyday social interaction” (Aldert Vrij, 2000)

liar, liar pants on fire?• Were these famous (or

infamous) figures lying or telling the truth?

lying is common

• DePaulo & Kashy (1998): the average person lied to 34% of the people with whom she/he interacted in a typical week.

• Hample (1980) respondents reported lying an avg. of 13 times per week.

• DePaulo & Bell (1996) Married couples lied in 1 out of 10 interactions with their partners.

• DePaulo & Kashy (1988): college students lied to their mothers in half of their conversations

• Robinson, Shepherd, & Heywood (1998): 83% of respondents said they would lie in order to get a job.

Hmm…what if the people surveyed in these studies were lying?

– Bill Clinton, “I never had sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky, and I never, ever told anyone to lie.”

why lie?

• motivations for lying• Lie to benefit another• Lie for affiliation• Lie to protect privacy• Lie to avoid conflict• Lie to appear better (self promotion)• Lie to protect self• Lie to benefit self• Lie to harm another (malicious intent)• Lie for amusement (duping delight)

Donald Rumsfeld caught in a lie

• http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2537851

common misconceptionsabout lying

• No single, typical pattern of deceptive behavior exists (Vrij, 2000)– Example: 64% of liars in one study

showed a decrease in hand finger and arm movements

– 35% of liars showed an increase in the same movements

• Observers rely on false signs:– Response latency: taking longer to

answer– Eye contact: providing less eye contact– Postural shifting: squirming, body

movement• All three are unreliable indicators of

deception

more on misconceptions

• Liars don’t necessarily “look up and to the left”

• No proof that gaze is tied to neuro-linguistic processing– “To date, evidence that eye movements indicate

deception is lacking. Even those authors who suggested this relationship exists never presented any data supporting their view (Vrij, 2000, p. 38)

conceptualizations of deception

• two category approach– “white lies” (benefit other)– “blatant lies” (self-interest)

• three category approach – falsification (outright falsehoods) – misrepresentation (distortion,

exaggeration)– concealment (omission,

suppression) Was Saddam Hussein too good at bluffing for his own good? He convinced the Bush administration that he really did have WMDs

lying is a form ofcompliance gaining

• deceptive communication is intentional

• deceptive communication seeks a specific effect or outcome

• deception (if it’s successful) occurs without the conscious awareness of the target

• deception involves two or more persons– except for self-deception or “being in

denial”• deception relies on symbolic and

nonsymbolic behavior (e.g., nonverbal cues)

people, in general, arepoor lie detectors

• People fare only slightly better than a coin toss at detecting deception

• In general, people are much better at lying than detecting lies (Vrij, 2000).

• Bond & DePaulo (in press) a recent meta-analysis of 253 studies on deception revealed overall accuracy was approximately 53 percent

• 2/3rds of all people score between 50-59% in deception accuracy

Dr. Paul Ekman, one of the foremost experts on deception detection

how good are so-called experts at deception detection?

• Police officers and other law enforcement personnel believe they are adept at deception detection

• They often claim they can spot a liar based on nonverbal cues

• However…Ekman tested so-called “experts,” e.g., police, trial judges, psychiatrists, and the people who carry out lie detector tests.– Most scored no better than chance.– Clinical psychologists: 67.5% accuracy– L.A. county sheriffs: 66.7% accuracy– Secret service agents: 73-80% accuracy

Secret service agents were best at detecting lies

the “truth bias”

• Research has repeatedly shown that people enter interactions with preconceived expectations for truthfulness (Burgoon, 2005)

• (Levine, Park, & McCornack (1999) found that people are slightly better at detecting the truth, and slightly worse at detecting lies

• on average participants were able to detect a lie 44 percent of the time, and able to detect the truth 67 percent of the time.

• In everyday encounters, liars were only detected 15% of the time (Vrij, 2000).

a prototypical study on deception

• Ekman & Friesen (1974) conducted a study in which:– some subjects watched only the liars’ heads– some subjects watched only the liars’ bodies– results: subjects who watched only the liars’

bodies were more accurate in detecting deception.

Information Manipulation Theory

• McCornack et al (1992) developed IMT• according to IMT, deception can be accomplished by

varying the:– amount of information– veracity of information– relevance of information– clarity of information

Four-Factor Model of deception

Zuckerman et al (1981, 1985)– Arousal: lying

increases arousal• psychological and physical

arousal• pupil dilation, blink rate,

speech errors, etc. – Attempted Control:

liars try to control cue leakage

• “sending capacity hypothesis” (Ekman & Friesen, 1969; 1974)

• liars find it easier to control their face

• cue leakage occurs in the body, extremities

• cue leakage occurs in the voice

– Emotion: lying evokes negative affect

• lying triggers negative emotions like guilt, fear, anxiety

– Thinking: lying requires more cognitive effort

• lying usually requires more cognitive energy; formulating the lie, remembering the lie, making answers consistent

Interpersonal Deception Theory

Buller & Burgoon (1994) developed IDP– strategic behaviors (intentional behaviors and

plans)• uncertainty and vagueness (few, sketchy details)• nonimmediacy, reticence, withdrawal (psychological

distance, disinterest, aloofness)• dissociation (distance self from message, fewer “I” or

“me” statements)• image and relationship protecting behavior (smiling,

nodding)– nonstrategic leakage (unintentional leakage)

• arousal and nervousness• negative affect• incompetent communication performance

motivational impairment effect

• DePaulo & Kirkendol (1989) developed the MIE

• Liars tend to over-control their nonverbal behavior

• Liars are more rigid, exhibit less body movement– deception is often associated with less

finger, hand, lower limb movements• Liars do this because they think that

nervousness, fidgeting, shifting will be perceived as deception

• Liars do this because they are concentrating on other channels and can’t devote attention to their movements

lying as a communication skill Camden, Motley, & Wilson (1984) say deception

is a form of communication competence. A study by Feldman looked at the nonverbal

behavior of 32 young people ages 11 to 16. Teens were rated on their social skills and overall

popularity. Teens were then videotaped both lying and telling

the truth about whether they liked a drink they were given.

58 college students were asked to watch the videotapes and judge how much each teenager really liked the drink.

The socially adept teens were the best deceivers for all age groups. Both groups got better at lying as they got older.

Possibly thanks to stronger nonverbal skills, girls were better at lying than boys.

characteristics of successful deceivers

• high Machiavellians: are more manipulative, experience less guilt about lying

• high self monitors: are more socially adroit and therefore better at lying .

• good actors: some people have better acting skills than others, are better able to regulate their verbal and nonverbal cues

• Motivation: “high stakes” lies are easier to detect, “low stakes” lies are harder to spot

• gender differences: have revealed mixed results– females sometimes focus on misleading nonverbal

cues (eyes, face)– women may possess a stronger “truth bias”– individual differences tend to “swamp” gender

differences

characteristics of successfullie detectors

• They don’t concentrate on the face– They focus on vocal factors– They focus on the content or substance of the statement– They focus on the body, extremities, looking for over-control– They look/listen for non-immediacy, reticence, withdrawal,

disassociation

• Observers or 3rd parties are better at spotting deception than participants

false correlates of deception

• eye contact• smiling• head movements• gestures

• postural shifting• response latency (for rehearsed lies)• speech rate

“reliable”* correlates of deception

• more fidgeting• greater pupil dilation (5)• higher blink rate (8)• pressing lips together• more shrugs (4)• more adaptors (14)• shorter response length, fewer

details (17)• greater lack of immediacy (2)• raising chin

• more speech errors (12)• more speech hesitations (11)• less pitch variation(4)• more negative statements (5)• more irrelevant statements (6)• fewer first person pronouns• fewer admissions of lack of

memory• fewer spontaneous corrections

*note: there are no foolproof ways to detect deceptionnumbers in parentheses indicate how many studies found a positive correlation with that particular nonverbal cue

In which picture is the female genuinely happy?

A

B

C

D

generalizations: advice youcan “take to the bank”

• research consistently demonstrates that people are generally unable to detect deception (Miller & Stiff, 1993)

40-70% accuracy • veracity judgments tend to be based on the wrong

criteria (Stiff, 1995)• to detect deception, don’t look at the face• no single indicator proves truth or guilt: use

clusters of indicators, both verbal & nonverbal.• individual differences in deception ability and

deception detection ability are more important than “generic” factors