Timothy R. Levine, Kim B. Serota, Hillary C. Shulman (in press). The Impact of Lie to Me on Viewers’ Actual Ability to Detect Deception Communication Research first published on June 17, 2010 doi:10.1177/0093650210362686

The new television series Lie to Me portrays a social scientist solving crimes through his ability to read nonverbal communication. Promotional materials claim the content is based on actual science. Participants (N = 108) watched an episode of Lie to Me, a different drama, or no program and then judged a series of honest and deceptive interviews. Lie to Me viewers were no better at distinguishing truths from lies but were more likely than control participants to misidentify honest interviewees as deceptive. Watching Lie to Me decreases truth bias thereby increasing suspicion of others while at the same time reducing deception detection ability.

Hat tip to Karen Franklin.

• Delusion and confabulation: Overlapping or distinct distortions of reality? Robyn Langdon; Martha Turner
• Varieties of confabulation and delusion, Michael D. Kopelman
• The affective neuropsychology of confabulation and delusion, Aikaterini Fotopoulou
• The role of personal biases in the explanation of confabulation, Kasey Metcalf ; Robyn Langdon ; Max Coltheart
• Temporal consciousness and confabulation: Is the medial temporal lobe “temporal”? Gianfranco Dalla Barba ; Marie-Françoise Boissé
• Novel insights into false recollection: A model of déjà vécu, Akira R. O’Connor ; Colin Lever ; Chris J. A. Moulin
• Strategic retrieval, confabulations, and delusions: Theory and data, Asaf Gilboa
• Beauty and belief: William James and the aesthetics of delusions in schizophrenia, Vaughan J. Carr
• Hypnotic illusions and clinical delusions: Hypnosis as a research method, Rochelle E. Cox ; Amanda J. Barnier
• The misidentification syndromes as mindreading disorders, William Hirstein
• Abductive inference and delusional belief, Max Coltheart ; Peter Menzies ; John Sutton
• Confabulation, delusion, and anosognosia: Motivational factors and false claims, Ryan McKay ; Marcel Kinsbourne
• Delusion and confabulation: Mistakes of perceiving, remembering and believing, Robyn Langdon ;T im Bayne
• Confabulation and delusion: A common monitoring framework, Martha Turner ; Max Coltheart

Here’s a study that sounds like an interesting addition to the literature on what people think of their own lie-detection abilities:

• E Elaad (2009). Lie-detection biases among male police interrogators, prisoners, and laypersons. Psychological Reports 105(3 Pt 2): 1047-56.

Beliefs of 28 male police interrogators, 30 male prisoners, and 30 male laypersons about their skill in detecting lies and truths told by others, and in telling lies and truths convincingly themselves, were compared. As predicted, police interrogators overestimated their lie-detection skills. In fact, they were affected by stereotypical beliefs about verbal and nonverbal cues to deception. Prisoners were similarly affected by stereotypical misconceptions about deceptive behaviors but were able to identify that lying is related to pupil dilation. They assessed their lie-detection skill as similar to that of laypersons, but less than that of police interrogators. In contrast to interrogators, prisoners tended to rate lower their lie-telling skill than did the other groups. Results were explained in terms of anchoring and self-assessment bias. Practical aspects of the results for criminal interrogation were discussed.

The full text is behind a paywall – I can’t find a direct link so you have to get there by going to the publisher’s website and searching their e-journals.

Here’s the abstract:

This study was designed to evaluate commonly used voice stress analyzers—in this case the layered voice analysis (LVA) system. The research protocol involved the use of a speech database containing materials recorded while highly controlled deception and stress levels were systematically varied. Subjects were 24 each males/females (age range 18–63 years) drawn from a diverse population. All held strong views about some issue; they were required to make intense contradictory statements while believing that they would be heard/seen by peers. The LVA system was then evaluated by means of a double blind study using two types of examiners: a pair of scientists trained and certified by the manufacturer in the proper use of the system and two highly experienced LVA instructors provided by this same firm. The results showed that the “true positive” (or hit) rates for all examiners averaged near chance (42–56%) for all conditions, types of materials (e.g., stress vs. unstressed, truth vs. deception), and examiners (scientists vs. manufacturers). Most importantly, the false positive rate was very high, ranging from 40% to 65%. Sensitivity statistics confirmed that the LVA system operated at about chance levels in the detection of truth, deception, and the presence of high and low vocal stress states.

Reference:

• James D. Harnsberger, Harry Hollien, Camilo A. Martin, and Kevin A. Hollien (in press) Stress and Deception in Speech: Evaluating Layered Voice Analysis. Journal of Forensic Sciences

You’ll find more on Layered Voice Analysis in the voice analysis category on this blog.

So depressing. Here’s the coverage so far:

• Stanford Center for Law & the Biosciences Blog, it appears, broke the story (14 Mar)
• Brief comments from the Neuroethics and Law Blog (15 Mar)
• Detailed report from Wired Science in MRI Lie Detection to Get First Day in Court (16 Mar)
• Karen Franklin’s In the News Blog offers further thoughts and links to previous posts on the limitations of fMRI for lie detection (16 Mar)

Related links:

• The company offering this service is No Lie MRI.
• More from the Deception Blog on fMRI and lie detection including links to relevant academic research
• Is the MRI lie detector test reliable? ScienceLine reports (3 November 2008)

Voodoo science in fMRI

If you’re involved or simply interested in fMRI research you’ll already be well aware of the ongoing debate about Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience [pdf]. If not, you’ll find the detail in coverage all over the psych and neuroblogs by googling the title or simply “voodoo correlations”.

Here’s how it went:

1. Edward Vul, Christine Harris, Piotr Winkielman, and Harold Pashler wrote a critique of a series of recent research studies exploring the neural correlates of various social psychological issues. Their paper was accepted by a peer-reviewed journal and will be published later this year.

2. Authors of those criticised research papers wrote careful defences of their work and pointed out problems in Vul et al’s arguments (here and here).

3. Vul et al. responded to the criticisms here.

And the debate continues – watching from the sidelines you get a sense of the passion and the intellect on both sides, with the process of open debate resulting in further clarification and some concessions (on both sides). Ultimately, this debate will result in better understanding of some important issues and better scrutiny of new research. Scientific progress, in other words.

Voodoo science in deception detection

Compare this to another recent controversy that started in the research literature (hat tip to Mind Hacks).

1. In 2007, the International Journal of Speech Language and the Law (a peer reviewed journal) published a critique by Anders Eriksson and Francisco Lacerda of mechanical methods of deception detection that claim to use ‘voice stress analysis’ or ‘layered voice analysis’ to detect deception. It is more pointed and more personal than the Vul et al. critique (commenting on the companies and the individuals involved in developing and marketing such machines), but the authors nevertheless examine the scientific literature carefully and raise some significant problems with the technology as it is marketed.

2. One of the companies named, Nemesysco, threatened to sue.

3. The publishers of IJSLL withdrew the paper (though, this being the age of the internet, you can access it here).

Rather than publish the potentially ground-breaking scientific evidence underpinning their technique, respond to the criticisms or engage in debate, a company uses legal threats to silence criticism. The result is that we have no chance to hear both sides of the story, little chance of increasing our understanding of the techniques or their theoretical basis, further polarisation of the pro- and anti- camps, and bugger all scientific progress. Shame.

Of course, Nemesysco’s actions do mean that a lot more of us know and are talking about the criticism of their technology than had they let the journal article lie (no pun intended).

Professor Ekman has a long and distinguished record of research on emotions and on lying. In the last few years he has focused on applying his work to practical problems of law enforcement and national security, including developing training packages for professionals who want to become better lie detectors. Ekman’s well-known in the psychological and, increasingly, security/law enforcement community, but the TV drama looks set to make him famous. This may be a good thing for better public understanding of the myths and realities of deception research: Ekman writes a commentary on each episode, explaining the science behind the drama.

There’s a lot of coverage and comment across the web, including a profile of Ekman in the New York Times (20 Jan), commentary and links on the blogs Neuronarrative and Eyes for Lies, and a heap of news articles reviewing and commenting on the series (such as this one from the Calgary Herald).

Malcolm Gladwell’s 2002 New Yorker article, which inspired the TV producer Brian Grazer to develop the idea behind the series, can be read here.

As the NYT profile concludes:

… the combination of crime-solving and insight into how to recognize liars may prove to have potent appeal, Mr. Grazer said. “Everyone likes to bust a liar,” he said.

• Part 1: Catching liars
• Part 2: New technologies
• Part 3: Magic
• Part 4: When people lie
• Part 5: Polygraphy

Children

First, a couple of articles about how children learn to lie:

• Anjanie McCarthy and Kang Lee (in press). Children’s knowledge of deceptive gaze cues and its relation to their actual lying behavior. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, published online 3 Aug 2008.

Eye gaze plays a pivotal role during communication. When interacting deceptively, it is commonly believed that the deceiver will break eye contact and look downward. We examined whether children’s gaze behavior when lying is consistent with this belief. …Younger participants (7- and 9-year-olds) broke eye contact significantly more when lying compared with other conditions. Also, their averted gaze when lying differed significantly from their gaze display in other conditions. In contrast, older participants did not differ in their durations of eye contact or averted gaze across conditions. Participants’ knowledge about eye gaze and deception increased with age. This knowledge significantly predicted their actual gaze behavior when lying. These findings suggest that with increased age, participants became increasingly sophisticated in their use of display rule knowledge to conceal their deception.

• V Talwar and K Lee (2008). Social and cognitive correlates of children’s lying behavior. Child development, 79(4):866-881 [pre-print pdf available]

The relation between children’s lie-telling and their social and cognitive development was examined. Children (3-8 years) were told not to peek at a toy. Most children peeked and later lied about peeking. Children’s subsequent verbal statements were not always consistent with their initial denial and leaked critical information revealing their deceit. Children’s conceptual moral understanding of lies, executive functioning, and theory-of-mind understanding were also assessed. Children’s initial false denials were related to their first-order belief understanding and their inhibitory control. Children’s ability to maintain their lies was related to their second-order belief understanding. Children’s lying was related to their moral evaluations. These findings suggest that social and cognitive factors may play an important role in children’s lie-telling abilities.

Technotreachery – lying via CMC

It’s a popular topic and the literature is growing all the time. Here’s some of the new research published in 2008 about lying in computer-mediated communication:

• Hung-Yi Lu (2008). Sensation-Seeking, Internet Dependency, and Online Interpersonal Deception. CyberPsychology & Behavior 11(2): 227-231.

This study aimed to elaborate the relationships between sensation-seeking, Internet dependency, and online interpersonal deception. Of the 707 individuals recruited to this study, 675 successfully completed the survey. The results showed high sensation-seekers and high Internet dependents were more likely to engage in online interpersonal deception than were their counterparts.

• Carmen C. Lewis and Joey F. George (2008). Cross-cultural deception in social networking sites and face-to-face communication. Computers in Human Behavior 24(6): 2945-2964

Deception research has been primarily studied from a Western perspective, so very little is known regarding how other cultures view deception… this study proposes a framework for understanding the role Korean and American culture plays in deceptive behavior for both face-to-face (FTF) and computer-mediated communication (CMC). … Korean respondents exhibited greater collectivist values, lower levels of power distance, and higher levels of masculine values than Americans. Furthermore, deceptive behavior was greater for FTF communication than for CMC for both Korean and American respondents. In addition to a significant relationship between culture and deception, differences were found between espoused cultural values and deceptive behavior, regardless of national culture. These results indicate the need for future research to consider cultural differences when examining deceptive behavior.

• Whitty, M.T. and Carville, S.E. (2008). Would I lie to you? Self-serving lies and other-oriented lies told across different media. Computers in Human Behavior. vol 24, pp. 1021-1031

This study set out to investigate the type of media individuals are more likely to tell self-serving and other-oriented lies, and whether this varied according to the target of the lie. One hundred and fifty participants rated on a likert-point scale how likely they would tell a lie. Participants were more likely to tell self-serving lies to people not well-known to them. They were more likely to tell self-serving lies in email, followed by phone, and finally face-to-face. Participants were more likely to tell other-oriented lies to individuals they felt close to and this did not vary according to the type media. Participants were more likely to tell harsh truths to people not well-known to them via email.

Detecting deception

OK, I know this probably could have gone into an earlier post. However, it does involve a bit of machinery so it didn’t fit in part 1, but the machinery has been in use for several decades so it couldn’t really fit in post 2.

• Seymour, T.L. & Kerlin, J.R. (in press). Successful detection of verbal and visual concealed knowledge using an RT-based paradigm . Applied Cognitive Psychology 22(4):475-490

An increasing number of researchers are exploring variations of the Concealed Knowledge Test (CKT) as alternatives to traditional ‘lie-detector’ tests. For example, the response times (RT)-based CKT has been previously shown to accurately detect participants who possess privileged knowledge. Although several studies have reported successful RT-based tests, they have focused on verbal stimuli despite the prevalence of photographic evidence in forensic investigations. Related studies comparing pictures and phrases have yielded inconsistent results. The present work compared an RT-CKT using verbal phrases as stimuli to one using pictures of faces. This led to equally accurate and efficient tests using either stimulus type. Results also suggest that previous inconsistent findings may be attributable to study procedures that led to better memory for verbal than visual items. When memory for verbal phrases and pictures were equated, we found nearly identical detection accuracies.

Deception book of the year

And finally, an important publication in 2008 was the second edition of Aldert Vrij’s Detecting Lies and Deceit: Pitfalls and Opportunities. The first edition (published in 2000) has been one of my key references for scholarly research on deception, along with Paul Ekman’s Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics and Marriage and Granhag and Stronwall’s edited volume on The Detection of Deception in Forensic Contexts. Not surprising then that Vrij’s second edition is already one of the most frequently consulted volumes on my deception bookshelf.

Vrij says that he did not originally envisage updating his 2000 book until at least 2010, but felt with the increasing amount of new research in this area, and increasing interest from law enforcement and security agencies in detecting deception that he could not wait that long. The result is a volume that is substantially updated with research published up to about the middle of 2007. The book has been completely rewritten and there are several new chapters covering recent developments in mechanical methods of deception detection, including brain scanning technologies (e.g., fMRI, P300 brain waves), thermal imaging and voice stress analysis. Vrij also adds a helpful chapter on how professionals can become better lie detectors.

It’s not perfect – I’d welcome more detail on on understanding the reasons why people lie (the book is mostly about catching liars), more on creating a context in which someone is more likely to tell the truth, and more discussion of cross-cultural differences in deception (though to be fair there is shockingly little research in this area to discuss). But despite these criticisms, Vrij’s new book remains a ‘must have’ reference for academics and professionals interested in up-to-date research on deception detection. Practitioners in particular should heed Vrij’s warning about over-hyped techniques for ‘deception detection’: as Vrij says, the best way to avoid falling for the hype is by keeping up to date with the independent, objective research on deception detection. This book is a great tool for giving yourself a grounding in that research.

Phew. Six months’ blogging in 6 days. Hope you enjoyed it!

• Part 1: Catching liars
• Part 2: New technologies
• Part 3: Magic
• Part 4: When people lie

The first paper here is the most interesting to me, particularly because there are rather few published research findings relating to what happens when people are polygraphed in their non-native language, but the others are probably only really of interest to hard-core psychophysiologists. If these all seem pretty heavy then I’d recommend heading over to a delightful post about William Moulton Marsden, one of the early pioneers of the polygraph, written by Romeo Vitelli at the Providentia blog, for some light relief.

• Catherine L. Caldwell-Harris, Ayse Aycicegi-Dinn (in press) Emotion and lying in a non-native language. International Journal of Psychophysiology, Available online 30 September 2008

Bilingual speakers frequently report experiencing greater emotional resonance in their first language compared to their second. In Experiment 1, Turkish university students who had learned English as a foreign language had reduced skin conductance responses (SCRs) when listening to emotional phrases in English compared to Turkish, an effect which was most pronounced for childhood reprimands. A second type of emotional language, reading out loud true and false statements, was studied in Experiment 2… Results suggest that two factors influence the electrodermal activity elicited when bilingual speakers lie in their two languages: arousal due to emotions associated with lying, and arousal due to anxiety about managing speech production in non-native language. Anxiety and emotionality when speaking a non-naive language need to be better understood to inform practices ranging from bilingual psychotherapy to police interrogation of suspects and witnesses.

• Eitan Elaad (in press). Effects of Context and State of Guilt on the Detection of Concealed Crime Information. International Journal of Psychophysiology

The effects of the state of guilt and the context in which critical information was received on the accuracy of the Concealed Information Test (CIT) were examined in a between-subjects mock crime experiment… Results indicated that accomplices were more effectively detected than innocent participants, although both were given the same critical information. Information gathered in the crime context yielded stronger orientation to the critical items than similar information gathered in a neutral context.

• Matthias Gamer, Heinz Werner Godert, Alexander Keth, Hans-Georg Rill, Gerhard Vossel (2008). Electrodermal and phasic heart rate responses in the Guilty Actions Test: Comparing guilty examinees to informed and uninformed innocents. International Journal of Psychophysiology69(1):61-68

The present mock-crime study concentrated on the validity of the Guilty Actions Test (GAT) and the role of the orienting response (OR) for differential autonomic responding. N = 105 female subjects were assigned to one of three groups: a guilty group, members of which committed a mock-theft; an innocent-aware group, members of which witnessed the theft; and an innocent-unaware group… For informed participants (guilty and innocent-aware), relevant items were accompanied by larger skin conductance responses and heart rate decelerations whereas irrelevant items elicited HR accelerations. Uninformed participants showed a non-systematic response pattern.

• Wolfgang Ambach, Rudolf Stark, Martin Peper, Dieter Vaitl (2008). An interfering Go/No-go task does not affect accuracy in a Concealed Information Test. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 68(1):6-16

Following the idea that response inhibition processes play a central role in concealing information, the present study investigated the influence of a Go/No-go task as an interfering mental activity, performed parallel to the Concealed Information Test (CIT), on the detectability of concealed information… No physiological evidence for an interaction between the parallel task and sub-processes of deception (e.g. inhibition) was found. Subjects’ performance in the Go/No-go parallel task did not contribute to the detection of concealed information.

• Wolfgang Ambach, Rudolf Stark, Martin Peper, Dieter Vaitl (2008). Separating deceptive and orienting components in a Concealed Information Test. International Journal of Psychophysiology 70(2):95-104

The Concealed Information Test (CIT) requires the examinee to deceptively deny recognition of known stimuli and to truthfully deny recognition of unknown stimuli. Because deception and orienting are typically coupled, it is unclear how exactly these sub-processes affect the physiological responses measured in the CIT…The present study aimed at separating the effects of deception from those of orienting…The findings further support the notion that psychophysiological measures elicited by a modified CIT may reflect different mental processes involved in orienting and deception.

The final part of this research round-up includes papers on children’s deception, and on technotreachery.