Kinesic Patterning in Deceptive and Truthful Interactions

Nonverbal cues to deception: insights from a mock crime scenario in a Chinese sample

Nonverbal behaviors could play a crucial role in detecting deception, yet existing studies on deception cues have largely centered on Western populations, predominantly university students, thus neglecting the influence of cultural and sample diversity. To address this gap, our study explored deception cues within an Asian cultural setting, utilizing a mock crime paradigm. Our sample comprised Chinese participants, including both men and women with various socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. Our findings revealed that compared to truth tellers, liars exhibited heightened emotions and an increased cognitive load. Furthermore, liars showed a higher frequency of self-adaptors and a longer duration of gaze aversion. Our findings contribute to a more profound understanding of deception cues within Asian culture and have implications for practical fields such as criminal interrogation.

Mining Bodily Cues to Deception

A significant body of research has investigated potential correlates of deception and bodily behavior. The vast majority of these studies consider discrete, subjectively coded bodily movements such as specific hand or head gestures. Such studies fail to consider quantitative aspects of body movement such as the precise movement direction, magnitude and timing. In this paper, we employ an innovative data mining approach to systematically study bodily correlates of deception. We re-analyze motion capture data from a previously published deception study, and experiment with different data coding options. We report how deception detection rates are affected by variables such as body part, the coding of the pose and movement, the length of the observation, and the amount of measurement noise. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of a data mining approach, with detection rates above 65%, significantly outperforming human judgement (52.80%). Owing to the systematic analysis, our analyses allow for an understanding of the importance of various coding factor. Moreover, we can reconcile seemingly discrepant findings in previous research. Our approach highlights the merits of data-driven research to support the validation and development of deception theory.

T-Pattern Analysis and Cognitive Load Manipulation to Detect Low-Stake Lies: An Exploratory Study

Deception has evolved to become a fundamental aspect of human interaction. Despite the prolonged efforts in many disciplines, there has been no definite finding of a univocally "deceptive" signal. This work proposes an approach to deception detection combining cognitive load manipulation and T-pattern methodology with the objective of: (a) testing the efficacy of dual task-procedure in enhancing differences between truth tellers and liars in a low-stakes situation; (b) exploring the efficacy of T-pattern methodology in discriminating truthful reports from deceitful ones in a low-stakes situation; (c) setting the experimental design and procedure for following research. We manipulated cognitive load to enhance differences between truth tellers and liars, because of the low-stakes lies involved in our experiment. We conducted an experimental study with a convenience sample of 40 students. We carried out a first analysis on the behaviors' frequencies coded through the observation software, using SPSS (22). The aim was to describe shape and characteristics of behavior's distributions and explore differences between groups. Datasets were then analyzed with Theme 6.0 software which detects repeated patterns (T-patterns) of coded events (non-verbal behaviors) that regularly or irregularly occur within a period of observation. A descriptive analysis on T-pattern frequencies was carried out to explore differences between groups. An in-depth analysis on more complex patterns was performed to get qualitative information on the behavior structure expressed by the participants. Results show that the dual-task procedure enhances differences observed between liars and truth tellers with T-pattern methodology; moreover, T-pattern detection reveals a higher variety and complexity of behavior in truth tellers than in liars. These findings support the combination of cognitive load manipulation and T-pattern methodology for deception detection in low-stakes situations, suggesting the testing of directional hypothesis on a larger probabilistic sample of population.

Conversing with a devil's advocate: Interpersonal coordination in deception and disagreement

This study investigates the presence of dynamical patterns of interpersonal coordination in extended deceptive conversations across multimodal channels of behavior. Using a novel "devil's advocate" paradigm, we experimentally elicited deception and truth across topics in which conversational partners either agreed or disagreed, and where one partner was surreptitiously asked to argue an opinion opposite of what he or she really believed. We focus on interpersonal coordination as an emergent behavioral signal that captures interdependencies between conversational partners, both as the coupling of head movements over the span of milliseconds, measured via a windowed lagged cross correlation (WLCC) technique, and more global temporal dependencies across speech rate, using cross recurrence quantification analysis (CRQA). Moreover, we considered how interpersonal coordination might be shaped by strategic, adaptive conversational goals associated with deception. We found that deceptive conversations displayed more structured speech rate and higher head movement coordination, the latter with a peak in deceptive disagreement conversations. Together the results allow us to posit an adaptive account, whereby interpersonal coordination is not beholden to any single functional explanation, but can strategically adapt to diverse conversational demands.

A Behaviour Sequence Analysis of Nonverbal Communication and Deceit in Different Personality Clusters

Despite difficulties in interpretation, nonverbal communication is especially important in forensic settings, such as police investigations. Three distinct clusters of personality disorders have been outlined as being associated with criminal behaviour. Understanding the similarities and differences between these personality clusters and nonverbal communication could help investigators look for key signs of psychological distress or deception. The current research proposes a novel approach to nonverbal communication: behaviour sequence analysis (BSA). An application of this approach is outlined to investigate whether criminals with different personality types are better at concealing emotions and nonverbal communication when being interrogated. The results indicate that while sequences are generally similar across clusters, individuals from different personality clusters exhibit unique patterns. This research provides an initial step towards a new area of nonverbal communication research and application, which could be used in future research to highlight increased possibility of deception or concealment of emotion.

The Presence of 'Um' as a Marker of Truthfulness in the Speech of TV Personalities

The aim of this study is to determine whether the presence of the interjection 'um' can distinguish between the deceptive and truthful speech of individuals who are practised in the art of impression management. A total of 50 truthful and 61 deceptive statements were extracted from the speech of celebrities participating in a televised comedy panel show where celebrity guests try to convince an opposing team of their truthfulness. Participants' use of 'um' (measured as a percentage of the total word count of each statement) was analysed. The results show that, on average, 'um' was used almost three times as often in the speakers' true statements compared to their false ones. A discriminant analysis revealed that the presence of 'um' is more effective than human judgement alone in determining veracity. These findings suggest that the presence of the filler 'um' in speech is useful in the identification of true versus false oral statements.