The guilty brain: the utility of neuroimaging and neurostimulation studies in forensic field

Several studies have aimed to address the natural inability of humankind to detect deception and accurately discriminate lying from truth in the legal context. To date, it has been well established that telling a lie is a complex mental activity. During deception, many functions of higher cognition are involved: the decision to lie, withholding the truth, fabricating the lie, monitoring whether the receiver believes the lie, and, if necessary, adjusting the fabricated story and maintaining a consistent lie. In the previous 15 years, increasing interest in the neuroscience of deception has resulted in new possibilities to investigate and interfere with the ability to lie directly from the brain. Cognitive psychology, as well as neuroimaging and neurostimulation studies, are increasing the possibility that neuroscience will be useful for lie detection. This paper discusses the scientific validity of the literature on neuroimaging and neurostimulation regarding lie detection to understand whether scientific findings in this field have a role in the forensic setting. We considered how lie detection technology may contribute to addressing the detection of deception in the courtroom and discussed the conditions and limits in which these techniques reliably distinguish whether an individual is lying

Increased motor cortex excitability for concealed visual information

Deceptive behaviour involves complex neural processes involving the primary motor cortex. The dynamics of this motor cortex excitability prior to lying are still not well understood. We sought to examine whether corticospinal excitability can be used to suggest the presence of deliberately concealed information in a modified version of the Guilty Knowledge Test (GKT). Participants pressed keys to either truthfully or deceitfully indicate their familiarity with a series of faces. Motor-evoked-potentials (MEPs) were recorded during response preparation to measure muscle-specific neural excitability. We hypothesised that MEPs would increase during the deceptive condition not only in the lie-telling finger but also in the suppressed truth-telling finger. We report a group-level increase in overall corticospinal excitability 300 ms following stimulus onset during the deceptive condition, without specific activation of the neural representation of the truth-telling finger. We discuss cognitive processes, particularly response conflict and/or automated responses to familiar stimuli, which may drive the observed non-specific increase of motor excitability in deception

The Effects of Media Capabilities on the Rationalization of Online Consumer Fraud

This research develops and tests a model of online consumer fraud to determine how the capabilities of communication technologies affect the rationalization of fraudulent behaviors. The model is based on research about the rationalization of fraud, media capabilities, and computer-mediated deception. This investigation empirically tests this model by analyzing 459 Facebook advertisements and 1,896 surveys completed by university students. The findings indicate that the capabilities provided by communication technologies affect the extent to which media mask cues of deceit and dehumanize others. As a result, some media capabilities increase one’s willingness to engage in fraudulent behaviors while other capabilities deter those actions. Media capabilities that mask cues of deceit and reduce social presence increase the inclination of individuals to rationalize fraudulent activities, while media capabilities that expose cues of deceit and increase social presence deter individuals from rationalizing acts of fraud. Media offering greater capabilities for reprocessability and transmission velocity decrease the inclination to rationalize fraud, whereas greater capabilities for anonymity, rehearsability, and parallelism increase the inclination to rationalize fraud. In contrast, symbol set variety does not appear to significantly affect the inclination to rationalize fraud

Lying takes time : a meta-analysis on reaction time measures of deception

Lie detection techniques are frequently used, but most of them have been criticized for the lack of empirical support for their predictive validity and presumed underlying mechanisms. This situation has led to increased efforts to unravel the cognitive mechanisms underlying deception and to develop a comprehensive theory of deception. A cognitive approach to deception has reinvigorated interest in reaction time (RT) measures to differentiate lies from truths and to investigate whether lying is more cognitively demanding than truth telling. Here, we provide the results of a meta-analysis of 114 studies (n = 3307) using computerized RT paradigms to assess the cognitive cost of lying. Results revealed a large standardized RT difference, even after correction for publication bias (d = 1.049; 95% CI [0.930; 1.169]), with a large heterogeneity amongst effect sizes. Moderator analyses revealed that the RT deception effect was smaller, yet still large, in studies in which participants received instructions to avoid detection. The autobiographical Implicit Association Test produced smaller effects than the Concealed Information Test, the Sheffield Lie Test, and the Differentiation of Deception paradigm. An additional meta-analysis (17 studies, n = 348) showed that, like other deception measures, RT deception measures are susceptible to countermeasures. Whereas our meta-analysis corroborates current cognitive approaches to deception, the observed heterogeneity calls for further research on the boundary conditions of the cognitive cost of deception. RT-based measures of deception may have potential in applied settings, but countermeasures remain an important challenge

How people [try to] detect lies in everyday life

Laboratory-based deception-detection experiments often fail to capture the features of everyday life lie detection among ordinary citizens. In this study, we examined how people [try to] detect deception in real life. Over 10 weeks, every time the participants felt they had detected a lie, they filled in an online survey. Results show that, in everyday life, many lies are detected unexpectedly, often from non-behavioral indicators, that people suspecting deception search for both behavioral cues and non-behavioral information, but that non-behavioral information is more useful to detect deception. The study addresses aspects unexplored in prior studies on everyday life lie detection, provides new insights, and has theoretical implications.Financiación: Consejería de Educación de la Junta de Castilla y León, España. Apoyo: Fundación Universitaria Behavior & Law (https://behaviorandlaw.com/

Deception among Organizational Leaders: Impacts on Employee Perceptions of Supervisor Credibility, Power, and Trust

Deception is ubiquitous in day-to-day communication. While most deceptive acts are relatively minor in terms of interpersonal impact, lying in the workplace may result in negative organizational outcomes (Griffith et al., 2011). Moreover, business leaders who engage in deceptive communication may elicit similar behavior in their employees (Henrichs, 2007). The current study assesses how different deceptive messages spoken by organizational leaders (e.g., honest messages, messages that withhold information, and messages that distort information) impact employee perceptions of that leader’s credibility, power, and trustworthiness. The results of this study indicate that employees view business leaders as less credible and less trustworthy when they engage in deceptive communication, regardless of message type. Further, when managers engage in deceptive messaging, they are perceived as holding less referent power and are viewed as holding more coercive power. Legitimate power, expert power, and reward power were unaffected by deceptive messages. Implications for practice and recommendations for future research are discussed

Lying to identity: analysis of latencies from interviews.

openDetecting liars of personal identities is becoming an increasingly important goal. However, an obstacle to this endeavor is that deceivers can prepare a "lie script" prior to investigative interviews, producing narratives that are indistinguishable from those of truth tellers. To overcome this limitation, specific interview techniques have been developed that pose cognitive disadvantages for deceivers, such as including unexpected questions alongside control and expected questions. Unexpected questions can be considered a "rehearsal averting strategy" since liars cannot anticipate and prepare responses in advance. Consequently, when confronted with unexpected questions, liars are compelled to generate an immediate deceptive statement, inhibit the truth, and replace it with a fabricated narrative, while ensuring that the deception remains undetectable to the interviewer. This process of information reconstruction leads to increased response times and error rates for unexpected questions. Even truth tellers will experience an increase in cognitive load when responding to unexpected questions, but their responses, based on genuine memory traces, will be more comparable. The purpose of this study is to assess whether it is possible to discriminate between identity liars and truth tellers by analyzing response times and errors obtained from face-to-face interviews that implement unexpected questions.Detecting liars of personal identities is becoming an increasingly important goal. However, an obstacle to this endeavor is that deceivers can prepare a "lie script" prior to investigative interviews, producing narratives that are indistinguishable from those of truth tellers. To overcome this limitation, specific interview techniques have been developed that pose cognitive disadvantages for deceivers, such as including unexpected questions alongside control and expected questions. Unexpected questions can be considered a "rehearsal averting strategy" since liars cannot anticipate and prepare responses in advance. Consequently, when confronted with unexpected questions, liars are compelled to generate an immediate deceptive statement, inhibit the truth, and replace it with a fabricated narrative, while ensuring that the deception remains undetectable to the interviewer. This process of information reconstruction leads to increased response times and error rates for unexpected questions. Even truth tellers will experience an increase in cognitive load when responding to unexpected questions, but their responses, based on genuine memory traces, will be more comparable. The purpose of this study is to assess whether it is possible to discriminate between identity liars and truth tellers by analyzing response times and errors obtained from face-to-face interviews that implement unexpected questions