A confederate's Perspective on Deception

In this article, I outline my position regarding the use of deception in psychology experiments, based on my experience as a confederate. I describe an experiment I participated in and the problems resulting from the study: subjects' differing responses to the deception; angry reactions of some subjects to the experiment; and the general discomfort of both subjects and confederates, in particular, who had their doubts concerning the external validity of the study and the ethics involved in running it. issues of informed consent and debriefing are also addressed; it is argued that the success of deception depends on the subject being misinformed as to the experiment's true nature and that debriefing itself sometimes angers subjects. I encourage a decrease in the use of deception and the reexamination of a system that attempts to balance the pain of experimental participants with anticipated benefit to scientific knowledge.     

The miscommunication of deception: An adaptive perspective

Undergraduates were videotaped as they told lies and truths about their last job. Later, these undergraduates viewed the videotape and tried to guess which of their fellow subject were lying. Monetary incentives had been offered for successful lying and lie detection. Our subjects showed a “demeanor bias”—some looked honest even when they were lying; others looked dishonest even when they were telling the truth. These differences in apparent honesty were the primary determinant of deception judgments; perceivers' detection skills played a lesser role. Honest-looking subjects were predisposed to perceive others as dishonest. In general, our liars used hand gestures, maintained eye contact, and refrained from smiling. Perceivers misconstrued these behaviors as signs of honesty and could not often detect deceit—unless the lie was being told by a subject who had earlier told the truth. We draw on sociobiological concepts and offer an adaptive perspective on human deceit.     

The deception faucet: A metaphor to conceptualize deception and its detection

Why are there few reliable deception cues and why is deception detection a challenge? These questions are related and have puzzled social scientists, leading to few universal truths about the relationship between deception and communication behavior. This article reviews existing theories to suggest how deceptive discourse production actually occurs, which can lead to a better understanding of deception production and detection processes. Crucial components of a deception — lie-truth base-rates, deception expectations, and goals — are largely overlooked in most theories and primary studies, but are integrated in this paper through a deception faucet metaphor. The metaphor describes deceptive discourse production as violations of conversational maxims (Quantity, Quality, Manner, Relation) and reflected by characteristics that change across deceptions. Considerations for theory and application are suggested.     

The confederate's and others' self-conversion: a neglected phenomenon

The authors analyzed a neglected phenomenon: self-conversion. Rather than concentrating on the influence exerted by a confederate on a naive participant, the authors studied how the confederate is himself or herself influenced by the position that he or she defends at the request of the experimenter. This experiment is particularly revealing with respect to a fundamental aspect of the psychology of the proselytizing of minority groups: In the process of convincing others, one also convinces oneself. Exerting influence on others thus leads to self-conversion, which allows the group to reinforce its beliefs and to stand up to conformity pressures.     

自我控制对欺骗的影响

自我控制是欺骗识别中一种重要的动机线索。但无论是在识别欺骗中, 自我控制扮演的动机线索角色, 还是在欺骗行为中, 自我控制扮演的监管机制的角色, 其认知机制和神经基础还不完全清楚。自我控制能力与自我控制资源对欺骗的影响也是不一样的, 而这些影响的神经基础也还没有完全破解。因此, 有必要结合行为、事件相关电位(ERP)及功能性磁共振(fMRI)等多种技术手段来考察识别欺骗和欺骗行为中自我控制能力和自我控制资源在欺骗中的作用及其心理机制。旨在探求在识别欺骗中是识别他人自我控制能力, 还是识别他人自我控制资源在起主要作用; 欺骗行为中是自我控制能力, 还是自我控制资源在起主要作用; 自我控制资源对欺骗行为的影响是符合能量耗竭观, 还是符合能量保存观。     

Cues to deception

Do people behave differently when they are lying compared with when they are telling the truth? The combined results of 1,338 estimates of 158 cues to deception are reported. Results show that in some ways, liars are less forthcoming than truth tellers, and they tell less compelling tales. They also make a more negative impression and are more tense. Their stories include fewer ordinary imperfections and unusual contents. However, many behaviors showed no discernible links, or only weak links, to deceit. Cues to deception were more pronounced when people were motivated to succeed, especially when the motivations were identity relevant rather than monetary or material. Cues to deception were also stronger when lies were about transgressions.     

欺骗判断与欺骗行为中自我控制的影响

欺骗判断与欺骗行为有着不同的心理机制, 正确认识二者之间的关系有助于增强人际间的信任和团队的长远利益。采用行为学实验从两种视角下考察自我控制对欺骗的影响。实验1采用材料评定的方法考察了识别他人自我控制能力状况对欺骗判断的影响, 结果发现对比高自我控制能力的人, 被试更倾向于认为低自我控制能力的人更有可能为了自己的利益产生欺骗行为和欺骗倾向。实验2采用颜色Stroop任务考察了识别他人自我控制资源衰竭状况对欺骗判断的影响, 结果发现当识别他人自我控制资源衰竭时, 在评价他人为自己利益去欺骗、为他人利益去欺骗以及在特定情境中欺骗倾向上, 没有发现任何显著的主效应或交互作用。实验3采用视觉−感知任务来考察不同水平的自我控制能力对欺骗行为的影响, 结果发现, 对比高自我控制组, 低自我控制组有更多的欺骗行为和欺骗倾向。实验4采用颜色Stroop任务和视觉−感知任务来考察自我控制资源对欺骗行为的影响, 结果发现, 对比控制组, 自我控制资源衰竭组有更多的欺骗行为和欺骗倾向。这些研究结果表明, 在进行欺骗判断时, 相比自我控制资源状况, 个体会优先识别他人的自我控制能力水平来判断其是否具有欺骗动机或欺骗倾向。在欺骗行为中, 高自我控制能力的个体, 能够更好地抑制自私动机, 更多的考虑长远利益, 出于自身利益去欺骗的可能性会更小; 自我控制资源充足的个体, 更有可能会经得住诱惑, 自私自利的欺骗行为发生的可能性也会更小。     

Effects of task-irrelevant emotional information on deception

Deception has been reported to be influenced by task-relevant emotional information from an external stimulus. However, it remains unclear how task-irrelevant emotional information would influence deception. In the present study, facial expressions of different valence and emotion intensity were presented to participants, where they were asked to make either truthful or deceptive gender judgments according to the preceding cues. We observed the influence of facial expression intensity upon individuals’ cognitive cost of deceiving (mean difference of individuals’ truthful and deceptive response times). Larger cost was observed for high intensity faces compared to low intensity faces. These results provided insights on how automatic attraction of attention evoked by task-irrelevant emotional information in facial expressions influenced individuals’ cognitive cost of deceiving.     

Vocal cues to deception: A comparative channel approach

The study investigated the leakage potential of different voice and speech cues using a cue isolation and masking design. Speech samples taken from an earlier experiment were used in which 15 female students of nursing dissimulated negative affect produced by an unpleasant movie or told the truth about positive affect following a pleasant movie. Several groups of judges rated these speech samples in five conditions: (1) forward or clear, (2) electronic filtering, (3) random splicing, (4) backwards, (5) pitch inversion, (6) tone-silence sequences. The results show that vocal cues do indeed carry leakage information and that, as reflected in the differences among the conditions masking different types of cues respectively, voice quality cues may be centrally implicated. In addition, gender differences in decoding ability are discussed.     

Personality and deception ability

Thirty-eight undergraduate subjects were administered the 16 Personality Factors Questionnaire, the Bem Sex Role Inventory, the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, and a measure of sociopolitical attitudes and a week later took part in a videotaped deception task. Subjects were requested to give short, videorecorded presentations on different sociopolitical topics. The topics were chosen in order to assure that each subject would give two presentations that were consistent with their attitudes (truth-telling), two presentations that were counter-attitudinal (deceptive), and two presentations on neutral topics. The presentations were then viewed by volunteer judges who rated each on a scale of believability. Results indicated that outgoing and energetic subjects were more successful deceivers, and that apprehensive subjects were less successful deceivers, presumably due to honest/deceptive demeanor biases. Persons scoring high on social desirability and on the motivational distortion (lie) scale of the 16 PF, were also more successful at the deception task. These findings replicate and expand previous research on the role of individual differences in deception ability.     

Age-related differences in deception

Young and older participants judged the veracity of young and older speakers' opinions about topical issues. All participants found it easier to judge when an older adult was lying relative to a young adult, and older adults were worse than young adults at telling when speakers were telling the truth versus lying. Neither young nor older adults were advantaged when judging a speaker from the same age group. Overall, older adults were more transparent as liars and were worse at detecting lies, with older adults' worse emotion recognition fully mediating the relation between age group and lie detection failures.     

Mindreading deception in dialog

This paper considers the problem of detecting deceptive agents in a conversational context. We argue that distinguishing between types of deception is required to generate successful action. This consideration motivates a novel taxonomy of deceptive and ignorant mental states, emphasizing the importance of an ulterior motive when classifying deceptive agents. After illustrating this taxonomy with a sequence of examples, we introduce a Framework for Identifying Deceptive Entities (FIDE) and demonstrate that FIDE has the representational power to distinguish between the members of our taxonomy. We conclude with some conjectures about how FIDE could be used for inference.     

The effectiveness of penalty takers' deception: A scoping review

Attackers are supposed to take advantage of producing deceptive actions in competitive ball sports, particularly in penalty situations. We conducted a scoping review of the experimental literature to scrutinize whether penalty takers do indeed benefit from using deceptive actions in penalty situations, especially by increasing the likelihood to score a goal. Studies using video-based and in-situ tasks in which soccer and handball goalkeepers try to save a penalty were evaluated. Results showed that penalty takers' manipulation of spatial information available to the goalkeeper during deception (i.e., by using misleading and/or disguising actions) is less effective in in-situ than video-based studies. We argue that this difference occurs because goalkeepers adapt differently to the spatiotemporal constraints in the video-based and in-situ tasks. Goalkeepers appear to prioritize picking up spatial information in video-based tasks while prioritizing temporal information in-situ tasks. Therefore, the manipulation of spatial information appears to be less effective in the more representative in-situ studies than in video-based studies. In order to deceive, penalty takers are advised to manipulate temporal information during on-field penalty situations.     

A cognitive-behavioral perspective on intelligence

The present editorial has two purposes. The first purpose is to indicate a parallel trend in two seemingly disparate areas of research which upon closer examination have interesting possible ties. These research areas are information processing and cognitive-behavior modification (CBM). The second purpose is to highlight the role that affect plays in intellectual functioning, noting some of the implications which then follow for the assessment of intelligence.     

A developmental perspective on bullying

In this paper, we examined the forms and relationship contexts of bullying in adolescence. Using cross‐sectional data, we assessed grade and sex differences in self‐reports of bullying and sexually harassing peers, as well as reports of dating aggression from1896 students from early to late adolescence. Reports of bullying others were highest around the school transition, with lowest levels at the end of high school. Boys reported more bullying and sexual harassment than girls. Sexual harassment of same‐ and opposite‐sex peers increased over the early adolescent years and leveled off in later high‐school years. There were no sex differences in the prevalence of indirect or physical aggression with a dating partner. Adolescents who bullied were at increased risk for the other forms of relationship aggression. These data highlight bullying as a relationship problem and point to the need for prevention programs to curtail the use of power and aggression in adolescent relationships. Aggr. Behav. 32:376–384, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.