Indicators of deception in different lie scenarios

Joanna Ulatowska

Joanna Ulatowska Institute of Applied Psychology, Academy of Special Education, Warsaw

Keywords: deception; cues to deception; deception detection

Abstract

The current study was designed to assess the presence of deception indicators in truthful and deceptive statements. Four independent raters watched 80 statements on three different topics and evaluated the presence of 11 different cues to deception. It was hypothesized that it would be impossible to accurately differentiate between truthful and deceptive statements based on raters’ evaluation and that the ratings of credibility would be based on stereotypical beliefs about cues to deception rather than on the objective indicators of deception. Moreover, different deception topics would result in different patterns of indicators. The results partially supported the hypothesis – the raters’ evaluations did not make it possible to differentiate truth from lies; however, it was usually the objective cues that were used to predict the credibility of statements. Moreover, different accounts resulted in different patterns of cues to deception.

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