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Digging into Deception Detection

lying-deceit-deceptionLast week we wrote about the importance of distinguishing micro and macro expressions, but we passed too quickly over deception detection.

Microexpressions differ from their longer lasting counterparts in many ways, but one of the most salient is the fact that they can betray underlying emotions. The fleeting microexpression can show anger or surprise where someone may be trying to conceal it, and effective deception detection can often involve noticing these microexpressions, as hard as that might be for a layperson.

As Drs. Matsumoto and Hwang point out, there are many factors that make people better at deception detection. These include personality features like openness to experience and conscientiousness but also empathy and emotional regulation.

One of the major takeaways from the study we blogged on last week was the more precise definition of what microexpressions are, committing to seeing them as incredible fleeting and at least under half a second.

This was elaborated on in a 2018 study by Drs. Matsumoto and Hwang which looked at microexpressions as keys to differentiating truth from lies, operationalizing this particular definition of the length of microexpressions. They point out that previous research found mixed results in connecting microexpressions to deception detection, but that such research had failed to rigorously define how long a microexpression is.

Much of this past literature, though it found the potential for microexpressions, was that it did not properly define microexpressions based on observations of how they actually function. Some of this research categorized microexpressions as lasting for up to four seconds!

Such a revised definition makes a great deal of sense when looking at deception detection. Much of the attempt to conceptualize microexpressions comes from trying to see their role in showing spontaneous and concealed expressions. Longer durations are less likely to be signs of repressed and concealed emotions.

This 2018 study then sought to look at the role of microexpressions in deception detection given this more rigorous definition. First, they looked at whether microexpressions under half a second occurred and if they could reliably distinguish truth from deception. They also looked at longer expressions to see if these could be seen as consistently spontaneous.

They found that such expressions were generally frequent and acted as reliable indicators of deception, much more so than expressions longer than a second. Interesting, very short expressions of less than 0.3 seconds were not helpful indicators.

We are curious what our readers have to say about this, however. Do you notice these fleeting expressions? Do you think that they are uniquely distinct from longer expressions? Please comment and let us know what you think!

The Makings of a Lie Detector

Lie detection is tough for a lot of people, but why do some people happen to just be better at it than others?

This is an important question not just in our attempts to understand how to detect deception but also in efforts to better understand the role of emotional recognition in lie detection. A new study in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin sought to disentangle various features of emotional recognition as a way of explaining variations in participants’ abilities to detect deception.

The study authors look at several variables that could explain variation in deception detection. One is “Theory of Mind” which looks at an individual’s general ability to read others’ mental states. Similarly, they looked at emotional intelligence which, while similar to Theory of Mind, focuses more on interpersonal competency and emotional recognition.

It is important to distinguish truth detection from deception detection. This should make sense intuitively, as we often get a clear intuitive sense that we are being lied to, but that doesn’t mean we always have an affirmative sense of another person’s truth-telling. Instead, we often just don’t feel lied to and conclude they are telling the truth.

They also distinguished between “high-stakes” and “low-stakes” deception, under the hypothesis that behaviors would be significantly different between the two. Namely, they note that past research has found that people tend to believe others most in low-stakes scenarios, while they become more discerning when the states get higher.

In order to explore the relationships between those topics, the study authors performed an experiment on over 100 participants. In the experiment, each participant was asked to review a series of videos of individuals speaking to high profile events, such as cases of alleged murder. Half of these were incidents of deception.

After watching each video, the participants were asked to determine who was telling the truth and who was not. Because emotional intelligence and other variables were measured by a pre-treatment series of questionnaires and tests, the researchers were able to explore statistical relationships between those emotional traits and rates of accuracy.

Overall, they did find that truth and deception detection were different as suspected, with different predictors proving significant for each. For instance, Theory of Mind accounted for much deception detection variance and emotionally intelligent participants often felt too much sympathy for liars.

This distinction seems rooted in the need for detached reasoning in detecting deception. While recognizing and understanding emotions is helpful , it often must be paired with a calculated and logical approach. This can be difficult for those with high levels of empathy, even though they tend to be good at noticing emotions like guilt.

Hopefully, this gives you some more information on what makes a good lie detector, but also come check out our new website dedicated to deception detection for more!

Studying Deception Among Children

As many of us know, children are still known to practice deception, and maybe there is a lot to learn about deception from them.

This was the motivation for a recent study by Hilal Şen and Aylin C. Küntay in the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, where they sought to simulate acts of deception amongst preschool age children in order to better understand the relationship between practices of deception and nonverbal behavior.

While children may seem to be an odd choice for a deception detection experiment, there is actually a long extant literature delving into childhood deception. Interestingly, previous research has found that adults have trouble distinguishing between truth and falsehood among children. As we have previously written, children also practice deception at relatively high rates.

Despite this literature, the study authors sought to go a step further. Previous research, they contend, has largely failed to grasp actual spontaneous acts of deception, instead prompting children to lie or not. A more accurate approach would certainly be to try to more closely simulate real world situations where children being studied practice deception spontaneously and on their own volition.

Moreover, they note that collective interviewing, where multiple participants are asked to practice deception at the same time has been successful in the past in determining deceptive behavior. Yet, no such studies had been done with children.

It was both of these gaps which the current study sought to fill: spontaneous lying of children during group interviews. In order to do this, they relied on an experimental method where children were tempted to commit a transgression and later interviewed to examine what behaviors were showcased when deception was practiced.

Each participating child was sorted into a pair with another child that they already knew and was told to avoid touching certain toys. Then they were left alone while their behaviors were secretly recorded. After some time, each child pair was brought into an interview setting and asked a series of questions.

Throughout the interviews, each child was given clear opportunities to lie by omitting crucial details about their potential rule breaking while being asked to give a full account of what they had done while presumably unobserved. They were also tasked with answering direct questions about whether they had followed the rules.

After recording these interviews, the researchers were able to see if there were systematic differences in nonverbal behavior between the children who lied and those who had not, as of course the veracity of the interviews could be tested against video recordings.

Overall, there was very little difference in nonverbal behavior when children simply talked around their lies, such as by omitting it, but the situation was a bit different when asked a direct question. At that point, children took significantly longer to give their response when lying.

When lying, moreover, children were also more likely to look at each other than the pairs that told the truth. This is one way that the collective interviewing process can shed light on deceptive behavior.

This study then serves as a helpful template both for future research but also for our own efforts to detect deception. Collective interviewing clearly has its benefits in deception detection, as does the practice of asking straightforward questions and measuring response time.

This can be challenging though, as many behaviors were hard for the researchers to detect, and that’s a great reason to take a deception detection class!