The ease of lying

Brain imaging studies suggest that truth telling constitutes the default of the human brain and that lying involves intentional suppression of the predominant truth response. By manipulating the truth proportion in the Sheffield lie test, we investigated whether the dominance of the truth response is malleable. Results showed that frequent truth telling made lying more difficult, and that frequent lying made lying easier. These results implicate that (1) the accuracy of lie detection tests may be improved by increasing the dominance of the truth response and that (2) habitual lying makes the lie response more dominant.     

To be or not to be trusted: The influence of media richness on defection and deception

When business transactions take place between strangers, individuals rely on the cues during communication to determine whether they can trust others’ intentions. How that process occurs in the context of computer-mediated, video-mediated, and face-to-face interactions is still somewhat unknown. We examine how media richness influences both affective-based and cognitive-based trust in the context of two studies with two different social dilemma scenarios. Further, we explore how these two types of trust influence not only non-cooperative behavior (defection) but also lying (deception). Results from the first study suggest cognitive-based trust mediates the relationship between media richness and defection, while results from both studies suggest that affective-based trust mediates the relationship between media richness and deception. Video-mediated communication solves some, but not all, of the problems inherent when interacting via communication technology.     

The price of deceptive behavior: Disliking and lying to people who lie to us

We hypothesized that frequency and quality of deception influences how people perceive those who lie to them and that people subsequently increase deceptive behavior as a consequence of being lied to. In Study 1, participants were covertly videotaped conversing with a partner. Following the conversation, participants evaluated partners, and partners reviewed the videotape, identifying deceptions that they told. Findings indicated that partner’s frequency of deception was inversely related to likeability. In Study 2, participants watched a videotape of a confederate who appeared to produce one or four exaggerated or minimized lies, and then evaluated the confederate. Participants and confederates subsequently engaged in a conversation. When participants witnessed either one exaggerated lie, one or four minimal lies, or no lies they trusted and liked the confederate more than when witnessing four exaggerated lies. Moreover, participants increased their own use of deception as a function of the severity and quantity of confederate’s lies.     

Delta plots do not reveal response inhibition in lying

The role of response inhibition in lying is debated. By using the delta-plot method applied to the Sheffield Lie Test, Debey, Ridderinkhof, De Houwer, De Schryver, and Verschuere (2015) provided evidence supporting the role of inhibition in lying. In the study of Debey et al., inhibitory skill was measured in terms of the size of the lie effect. However, to provide convincing evidence that delta plots highlight the role of response inhibition in lying, inhibitory ability must be evaluated independently from the size of the lie effect. After replicating original findings, this article shows that a delta plot analysis does not differentiate individuals with different inhibitory abilities, when inhibitory skill is measured by means of the Stop Signal Task, instead of the size of the lie effect. This suggests that researchers should be cautious when making conclusions about cognitive mechanisms based on the sole analysis of delta plots.     

New perspectives in assessing deception: The evolution of the truth machine

In recent years a growing interest has arisen in the development of tools for the detection of deception. Since William M. Marston's first publication (1917) on the use of the polygraph as a lie detector, the application of this tool, commonly known as the truth machine, has evolved. Modern technologies are now trying to push the issue further, investigating brain activity during deception using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). The aim of this paper is to summarise the evolution of research from the original use of the polygraph to the use of new technologies in detecting deception, in order to provide an overview of the recent developments on the use of measurements of deception, and promote new research in this highly important domain of applied cognitive psychology.     

Instrumental lying by parents in the US and China

The practice of lying to one's children to encourage behavioral compliance was investigated among parents in the US (N = 114) and China (N = 85). The vast majority of parents (84% in the US and 98% in China) reported having lied to their children for this purpose. Within each country, the practice most frequently took the form of falsely threatening to leave a child alone in public if he or she refused to follow the parent. Crosscultural differences were seen: A larger proportion of the parents in China reported that they employed instrumental lie‐telling to promote behavioral compliance, and a larger proportion approved of this practice, as compared to the parents in the US. This difference was not seen on measures relating to the practice of lying to promote positive feelings, or on measures relating to statements about fantasy characters such as the tooth fairy. Findings are discussed with reference to sociocultural values and certain parenting‐related challenges that extend across cultures.     

Pilfering ravens, Corvus corax, adjust their behaviour to social context and identity of competitors

Like other corvids, food-storing ravens protect their caches from being pilfered by conspecifics by means of aggression and by re-caching. In the wild and in captivity, potential pilferers rarely approach caches until the storers have left the cache vicinity. When storers are experimentally prevented from leaving, pilferers first search at places other than the cache sites. These behaviours raise the possibility that ravens are capable of withholding intentions and providing false information to avoid provoking the storers' aggression for cache protection. Alternatively, birds may refrain from pilfering to avoid conflicts with dominants. Here we examined whether ravens adjust their pilfer tactics according to social context and type of competitors. We allowed birds that had witnessed a conspecific making caches to pilfer those caches either in private, together with the storer, or together with a conspecific bystander that had not created the caches (non-storer) but had seen them being made. Compared to in-private trials, ravens delayed approaching the caches only in the presence of storers. Furthermore, they quickly engaged in searching away from the caches when together with dominant storers but directly approached the caches when together with dominant non-storers. These findings demonstrate that ravens selectively alter their pilfer behaviour with those individuals that are likely to defend the caches (storers) and support the interpretation that they are deceptively manipulating the others' behaviour.This contribution is part of the special issue “Animal Logics” (Watanabe and Huber 2006).