DECEPTION & DECEPTION
DETECTION
“Deceiving others is an
essential part of everyday social
interaction” (Aldert Vrij, 2000)
Deception quiz
liar, liar pants on fire?
• Were these famous (or
infamous) figures lying or
telling the truth?
lying is common
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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?
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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
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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
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http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2537851
common misconceptions
about 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 of
compliance 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, are
poor 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 5059% 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
Secret service agents were
best at detecting lies
• 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: 7380% accuracy
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 successful
lie 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 nonimmediacy, reticence,
withdrawal, disassociation
• Observers or 3rd parties
are better at spotting
deception than
participants
false correlates of deception
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eye contact
smiling
head movements
gestures
• postural shifting
• response latency (for
rehearsed lies)
• speech rate
“reliable”* correlates of deception
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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
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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 deception
numbers in parentheses indicate how many studies found a
positive correlation with that particular nonverbal cue
In which picture is the female genuinely happy?
A
C
B
D
generalizations: advice you
can “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