Telling the difference between deceiving and truth telling: An experiment in a public space

The behavioral experiment presented in this paper investigated deception tasks (both concealment and lying) undertaken in a public space. The degree of risk of deception detection and the demands of self-regulation when deceiving were manipulated. The results showed a significant interaction effect between veracity and risk of deception detection, emerged for the body movement of “hand(s) in pocket(s)”. The incidence of “hand(s) in pocket(s)” was found to increase from truth telling to deceiving conditions when the risk of deception detection was higher, and to decrease from truth telling to deceiving conditions when the risk was lower. Higher risk of deception detection was also found in magnifying the “overall negative and controlled impression” displayed by both deceivers and truth tellers, compared to the lower risk of detection condition. We also discussed the possible effects of risk of deception detection and depletion of self-regulation, on deception behavior. Further studies and the connection between this study and the research community of computer vision and multimodel interaction is also discussed

Deception in context: coding nonverbal cues, situational variables and risk of detection

There are many situations in which deception may arise and understanding the behaviors associated with it are compounded by various contexts in which it may occur. This paper sets out a coding protocol for identifying cues to deception and reports on three studies, in which deception was studied in different contexts. The contexts involved manipulating risks (i.e., probability) of being detected and reconnaissance, both of which are related to terrorist activities. Two of the studies examined the impact of changing the risks of deception detection, whilst the third investigated increased cognitive demand of duplex deception tasks including reconnaissance and deception. In all three studies, cues to deception were analyzed in relation to observable body movements and subjective impressions given by participants. In general, the results indicate a pattern of hand movement reduction by deceivers, and suggest the notion that raising the risk of detection influences deceivers? behaviors. Participants in the higher risk condition displayed increased negative affect (found in deceivers) and tension (found in both deceivers and truth-tellers) than those in lower risk conditions

Detection of Deception in a Virtual World

This work explores the role of multimodal cues in detection of deception in a virtual world, an online community of World of Warcraft players. Case studies from a five-year ethnography are presented in three categories: small-scale deception in text, deception by avoidance, and large-scale deception in game-external modes. Each case study is analyzed in terms of how the affordances of the medium enabled or hampered deception as well as how the members of the community ultimately detected the deception. The ramifications of deception on the community are discussed, as well as the need for researchers to have a deep community knowledge when attempting to understand the role of deception in a complex society. Finally, recommendations are given for assessment of behavior in virtual worlds and the unique considerations that investigators must give to the rules and procedures of online communities.</jats:p

The effects of cheating on deception detection during a social dilemma

Research by social psychologists and others consistently finds that people are poor at detecting attempted deception by others. However, Tooby and Cosmides (cognitive psychologists who favor evolutionary analyses of behavior) have argued and shown that humans have evolved a special “cognitive module” for detecting cheaters. Their research suggests that people are good at detecting cheating by group members. These two literatures seem to be at odds with one another. The hypothesis of this research was that when participants are told a lie by a fellow group member whose attempted deception involves cheating on a task that affects their outcomes, they will be good at detecting deception. In this experiment, participants played blackjack in groups using a social dilemma paradigm. Participants’ outcomes were either interdependent or independent with a confederate’s outcomes. It was predicted that participants whose outcomes were interdependent with the confederate would be better at detecting deception by the confederate than those participants whose outcomes were independent from the confederate’s outcomes. Results indicate that when judging other participants’ lies interdependent players were more successful at deception detection than independent players but were not more sensitive to the lies. This effect may be driven by the truth bias, people assume that their interaction partners are truthful which would explain why sensitivity measures (which remove response biases) did not show the hypothesized effect. Independent players were not more successful or sensitive when judging the confederate’s lies. The failure to find the hypothesized effect may be due to methodological factors. Both participants heard may have had their cheating detection modules activated when hearing the instructions for the experiment which implied that cheating could occur. Overall success rates support this idea because they were significantly higher than success rates reached by most deception detection research (50%) which may be indicative that both participants cheating detection modules were active. Results also indicate that as the number of lies told increases overall success decreases but success at detecting lies and sensitivity increase. Thus the more lies that are told the better people are at catching them

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

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

Online Deception Detection Refueled by Real World Data Collection

The lack of large realistic datasets presents a bottleneck in online deception detection studies. In this paper, we apply a data collection method based on social network analysis to quickly identify high-quality deceptive and truthful online reviews from Amazon. The dataset contains more than 10,000 deceptive reviews and is diverse in product domains and reviewers. Using this dataset, we explore effective general features for online deception detection that perform well across domains. We demonstrate that with generalized features - advertising speak and writing complexity scores - deception detection performance can be further improved by adding additional deceptive reviews from assorted domains in training. Finally, reviewer level evaluation gives an interesting insight into different deceptive reviewers' writing styles.Comment: 10 pages, Accepted to Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing (RANLP) 201

Finding a needle in a haystack: toward a psychologically informed method for aviation security screening

Current aviation security systems identify behavioral indicators of deception to assess risks to flights, but they lack a strong psychological basis or empirical validation. We present a new method that tests the veracity of passenger accounts. In an in vivo double-blind randomized-control trial conducted in international airports, security agents detected 66% of deceptive passengers using the veracity test method compared with less than 5% using behavioral indicator recognition. As well as revealing advantages of veracity testing over behavioral indicator identification, the study provides the highest levels to date of deception detection in a realistic setting where the known base rate of deceptive individuals is low