Windows to the Soul? Deliberate Eye Contact as a Cue to Deceit

Although people overwhelmingly believe that liars avoid eye contact, meta-analyses of deception literature have shown a non-significant relationship between gaze and deception. In the present experiment we measured eye movements in an innovative way. We coded the extent to which interviewees deliberately made eye contact with the interviewer. Liars take their credibility less for granted than truth tellers. They therefore may have a greater desire to be convincing and hence more inclined to monitor the interviewer to determine whether they seem to be being believed. We therefore hypothesized that liars would give more appearance of deliberately making eye contact than truth tellers (a relationship which opposes the stereotypical belief that liars look away). A total of 338 passengers at an international airport told the truth or lied about their forthcoming trip. As well as the deliberate eye contact variable, we coded the amount of time the interviewees looked away from the interviewer (e.g., gaze aversion), which is typically examined in deception research. Liars displayed more deliberate eye contact than truth tellers, whereas the amount of gaze aversion did not differ between truth tellers and liars.     

When do we see that others misrepresent how they feel? detecting deception from emotional faces with direct and indirect measures

Nonverbally-expressed emotions are not always linked to people’s true emotions. We investigated whether observers’ ability to distinguish trues from lies differs for positive and negative emotional expressions. Participants judged targets either simulating or truly experiencing positive or negative emotions. Deception detection was measured by participants’ inference of the targets’ emotions and their direct judgments of deception. Results of the direct measure showed that participants could not accurately distinguish between truth tellers and liars, regardless which emotion was expressed. As anticipated, the effects emerged on the indirect emotion measure: participants distinguished liars from truth tellers when inferring experienced emotions from negative emotional expressions, but not positive emotional expressions.     

Detecting Deceit via Analysis of Verbal and Nonverbal Behavior

We examined the hypotheses that (1) a systematic analysis of nonverbal behavior could be useful in the detection of deceit and (2) that lie detection would be most accurate if both verbal and nonverbal indicators of deception are taken into account. Seventy-three nursing students participated in a study about telling lies and either told the truth or lied about a film they had just seen. The interviews were videotaped and audiotaped, and the nonverbal behavior (NVB) and speech content of the liars and truth tellers were analyzed, the latter with the Criteria-Based Content Analysis technique (CBCA) and the Reality Monitoring technique (RM). Results revealed several nonverbal and verbal indicators of deception. On the basis of nonverbal behavior alone, 78% of the lies and truths could be correctly classified. An even higher percentage could be correctly classified when all three detection techniques (i.e., NVB, CBCA, RM) were taken into account.     

Revisiting Perceiver and Target Gender Effects in Deception Detection

Existing research is inconclusive regarding the influence of perceiver gender and target gender on lie detection. Researchers have offered a number of conclusions regarding gender effects in deception detection (e.g., women are better at lie detection than men, participant and target gender interact in predicting deception detection accuracy, there are no gender effects in deception detection). In the current work, we revisit the question of whether and how gender influences lie detection, employing a large database of controlled stimuli, a large sample size, and the analytical advantages provided by signal detection theory. Participants viewed videos of male and female targets telling truths and lies about interpersonal relationships, and after each video, they rendered a truth or lie judgment. Female targets were easier to “read” (i.e., greater sensitivity) and were called liars more frequently than male targets. No effects of participant gender were observed. This work sheds light on an important issue in the lie detection literature (i.e., does gender matter?), and it identifies important considerations for understanding gender biases and cross-gender social interactions.     

The Voice of Deception: Vocal Strategies of Naive and Able Liars

The aim of this research was to analyze the main vocal cues and strategies used by a liar. 31 male university students were asked to raise doubts in an expert in law about a picture. The subjects were required to describe the picture in three experimental conditions: telling the truth (T) and lying to a speaker when acquiescent (L1) and when suspicious (L2). The utterances were then subjected to a digitized acoustic analysis in order to measure nonverbal vocal variables. Verbal variables were also analyzed (number of words, eloquency and disfluency index). Results showed that deception provoked an increment in F₀, a greater number of pauses and words, and higher eloquency and fluency indexes. The F₀ related to the two types of lie—prepared and unprepared—identified three classes of liars: good liars, tense liars (more numerous in L1), and overcontrolled liars (more numerous in L2). It is argued that these differences are correlated to the complex task of lying and the need to control one's emotions during deception. The liar's effort to control his/her voice, however, can lead to his/her tone being overcontrolled or totally lacking in control (leakage). Finally, the research forwards an explanation on the strategies used by the good liar and in particular treats the self-deception hypothesis.     

Lying through others: Does delegation promote deception?

How do agency relationships affect an individual’s willingness to lie for monetary advantage? Does lie aversion decline if a lie (or truth) is sent through an agent, rather than sent directly by the individual? In a recent paper, Erat (2013) shows that a significant proportion of his subjects prefer to delegate a deception decision. We present experiments designed to focus on one of several possible explanations for this intriguing behavior – that delegation reduces lie aversion. The experiments reveal that subjects are more willing to lie through a delegate than to lie directly despite controlling for potential effects of delegated decision-making on preferences over payoffs, probabilities of actions, and/or the desire to avoid taking a decision.     

Use of medroxyprogesterone acetate in treatment of a deaf‐mute sex offender

Two forms of social pressure—demand for erection and social in‐flunce—were tested on pairs of men viewing either nudes or explicit erotica. To test demand for erection, each man was told that hearing bio‐feedback of a co‐participant's erections might either increase or decrease his own arousal. To test social influence, each man heard bogus feedback of the other's erections, whereas controls heard true biofeedback of their own arousal. Four dependent variables included ratings of the erotica and percentage of erection attained during three trials. For 43 men viewing female nudes, from an average maximum erection of 35% for controls, erections rose to 61% or fell to 23%, depending on high or low feedback from the co‐participant. For 45 men viewing explicit intercourse, erections remained at consistently high levels regardless of feedback manipulations. In contrast to the impact of social influence, demand for erection had limited effect.     

Family Therapy … What's in a Name?

In the search for therapeutic efficacy, we vacillate from ‘certitude’ to ‘certitude’, repetitively embracing and then discarding the objects of our intellectual passion(!). The following juxtaposition of images and sounds is intended to suggest that ‘wisdom’ and ‘truth’ may derive from a more judicious and multi-layered integration of enquiry and fidelity. The idea of narrative implies not only a story but also a range of possible relationships between narrator and listener, and raises for examination the qualities of both parties. A ‘good story’ may lie as much in the probity of the relationship as in what is told or heard. It is even possible a ‘good story’ may not always be a story for ‘good’.     

‘Nothing happened’: Legal implications of false denials among abused children

People lie on a frequent basis. However, when a victim of maltreatment lies by denying the abuse, lies can become forensically relevant. We have reviewed the relevant literature on the prevalence and memory consequences of such false denials. The way forensic interviewers proceed in the face of denying children will be shaped by their beliefs about the frequency with which truly abused children deny abuse. We discuss that estimates of the prevalence of false denials among abused children vary but that such false denials do happen. When falsely denying children eventually come forward with their experiences, a second issue lingers: how valid are maltreated children's statements after a false denial? We review the literature indicating that false denials can negatively affect memory for the investigative interview during which the lie was told. Yet, memory for the denied experience itself seems to be mostly preserved, and some research even found potential protective effects of false denials. We conclude that denials should always be handled with care in the court room, since the ground truth usually is not known, but that statements should not be dismissed based solely on previous denials.     

Does output predict unemployment? A look at Okun's law in Greece

Using a dynamic specification of Okun's law, the authors examine the relationship between unemployment and output in Greece over the period 2000–12. While Granger causality tests indicate that real output is important to understanding future movements in unemployment, Okun's ratio is found to be 3:1, implying that a 1 per cent increase in unemployment was associated with a 3 per cent decrease in real output during the 13‐year period under study. Also, asymmetric analysis shows that the response of unemployment to real output is stronger during contractions of real economic activity than in expansionary periods.     

Executing Facial Control During Deception Situations

Behavioral countermeasures are the strategies engaged by liars to deliberately control face or body behavior to fool lie catchers. To date research has not shown whether deceivers can suppress elements of their facial expression as a behavioral countermeasure. This study examined whether participants could suppress facial actions such as eyebrow movements or smiles on command when under scrutiny by a lie catcher. The results derived from micro momentary coding revealed that facial actions can be reduced, but not eliminated, and that instructions to suppress one element of the expression resulted in reduction in all facial movement, regardless of veracity. The resulting implications for security contexts are discussed.     

THE IMPACT OF DECEPTION AND SUSPICION ON DIFFERENT HAND MOVEMENTS

The present experiment examined the relationship between different types of discourse linked hand movements and deception. Hand gestures were experimentally studied during truth telling and deception, and in situations with either weak or strong suspicion. Participants (128 Italian psychology students) were interviewed twice about the possession of an object. In one interview they were asked to lie and in the other asked to tell the truth (veracity factor). In both conditions, suspicion was raised after the interview: Participants were accused of lying by the interviewer and asked to repeat their account a second time (suspicion factor). Results indicate that lying was associated with a decrease in deictic gestures, and an increase in metaphoric gestures (main effect of veracity). Also a decrease in self-adaptor gestures was found. Strong suspicion was associated with an increase in metaphoric, rhythmic, and deictic gestures and a decrease in self-adaptor, emblematic, and cohesive gestures (main effect of suspicion). No interaction effect was found. Letizia Caso is affiliated with the Department of Human Sciences, University of Bergamo, Sede di S. Agostino, Piazzale della Fara 2, Bergamo, Italy. Fridanna Maricchiolo and Marino Bonaiuto are affiliated with the Department of Socialization and Developmental Psychology, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, via dei Marsi, 78, Rome, Italy. Aldert Vrij and Samantha Mann are affiliated with the Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth, King Henry Building, Portsmouth, United Kingdom. Address correspondence to Letizia Caso Department of Human Sciences, University of Bergamo, Sede di S. Agostino, piazzale della Fara 2, Bergamo, Italy, e-mail: letizia.caso@uniroma1.it.     

The Impact of High-Profile Sexual Abuse Cases in the Media on a Pediatric Emergency Department

High-profile media cases of sexual abuse may encourage disclosures of abuse from victims of unrelated assaults and also influence parental concerns, leading to increased emergency department visits. In the region of the study authors’ institution, there are two recent high-profile sexual abuse cases with media coverage: Earl Bradley, a Delaware pediatrician, and Jerry Sandusky, a Pennsylvania college football coach. This is a retrospective cohort study of children evaluated for sexual abuse at a pediatric emergency department. Patients were classified as either presenting during a media period or non-media period. The media periods were one-month periods immediately following breaking news reports, when the cases were highly publicized in the media. The non-media periods were the 12-month periods directly preceding the first reports. The median number of emergency department visits per month during a non-media period was 9 visits (interquartile range 6–10). There were 11 visits in the month following the Sandusky case and 13 visits following the Bradley case. There was no statistical difference in number of emergency department visits for sexual abuse between the periods (p = .09). These finding have implications regarding use of resources in pediatric EDs after high-profile sexual abuse cases.     

Demographic Change in Nonmetropolitan America, 1980 to 19901

Abstract Between 1980 and 1990, the nonmetropolitan population grew by 3.7 percent. Natural increase accounted for the entire population gain, offsetting a small migration loss (1.7%). A significant net loss of young adults from nonmetropolitan areas was only partially offset by an influx of older adults. The net gain through natural increase was small by historical standards and natural decrease became more common. The demographic trends of the 1980s were neither a repeat of the turnaround of the 1970s nor a reversion to historical patterns. Rather, they straddled the trends of the two preceding periods. These findings provide the demographic groundwork for future theoretical development. The policy implications of such population redistribution and demographic compositional shifts also are considered.     

(In)credible Violence: An Analysis of Post-Alvarado Domestic Violence Asylum Cases in the United States

ABSTRACT

Every year, women from around the world apply for asylum in the United States to escape an abusive partner. In this article I find that domestic violence applicants may not be interpreted as viable truth tellers since they are missing specific markers of credibility, including legitimacy of fear, coherence and corroboration, and proof of no culpability. I link these questions of credibility to broader US discourses about gender-based violence and racialized conceptions of victimhood, which show a preference for credentialed knowledge over women’s experiences and employ assumptions about autonomous, linear decision-making. I argue that the deployment of these discourses represents a tactic of exclusion, likely motivated by fears of immigration. Asylum adjudication practices (including credibility determinations) must address these issues in order to secure the health and well-being of women fleeing abusive partners in their countries of origin.     

PEAK LOAD PRICING IN COMPETITIVE MARKETS

The paper offers an explanation for temporal price dispersion. Temporal price dispersion in the model is due neither to exogenous shifts in demand nor to price discrimination motives as shown in other papers. In this paper the explanation relies on peak-load pricing. In the model presented, consumers decide to purchase a given product in a certain time period according to the satisfaction they derive from the product at that time and to the prices and number of customers they expect at each firm and period. The demand in each period is controlled by sellers through prices. By offering different prices in different periods, sellers motivate consumers to spread themselves across periods in a profitable way. Therefore, the demand and price in each time period is determined endogeneously.     

Assisted storytelling: Deploying shared knowledge as a practical matter

Previous studies have shown that storytelling in conversation consists of more than a speaker producing an extended narrative. Stories issue from the concerted action of storyteller and story recipients. The current study identifies features of storytelling found when some participants share knowledge of the source events for the story. Practices for assisting story initiation are described. Through these practices participants arrange who will deliver the story and concomitantly establish the other participant as a story consociate and thereby as a possible co-teller. Practices for assisting the delivery of a story are then described. A set of story entry devices is identified, and these devices are shown to provide occasions for changing tellers in the course of a story. Repeated use of these devices can provided repeated opportunities for re-arranging who will continue the story, thus producing the possibility of a collaboratively told story. The report ends with a discussion of assisted story reception. Assisted storytelling is shown to be a systematic elaboration of storytelling organization with opportunities for a story consociate to participate in both the delivery and reception of the story from the story preface, throughout the story, and into the final reception by story recipients.     

Transgression narratives,dialogic voicing,and cultural change1

The narrative discursively analyzed in this paper is taken from a larger study involving life history interviews with Latina/o immigrants in California. It exemplifies a type of narrative among these interviews in which tellers recount how they or their family members have broken with cultural expectations. In this story, the teller, a Nicaraguan woman, recounts how her uncle violated traditional values in her family by enlisting in the Sandinista army during wartime. Despite discursively distancing herself from this transgression, she ends by evaluating the transgressor and his recent accomplishments positively. Through an analysis of the appraisal strategies and interdiscursivity within this narrative, the paper contends that the narrators of such stories can go beyond managing deviations to dialogically position themselves among competing ‘social and historical voices’( Bakhtin 1981 ). Thus, the paper contends that transgression narratives represent the tellers’ efforts to come to terms with cultural changes in their communities.     

Individual Differences in Hand Movements During Deception

This article addresses the influence of 2 personality traits on making hand movements during deception, namely public self-consciousness and ability to control behavior. It was hypothesized that especially individuals with high public self-consciousness and individuals who are skilled in controlling their behavior would make fewer hand movements during deception compared to truth-telling. A total of 56 participants were interviewed twice; in one interview they told the truth and in the other interview they lied. Before the interviews the participants completed a personality inventory to measure their levels of public self-consciousness and ability to control their behavior. The results supported the hypotheses. Some implications of these findings are discussed.     

Do As I Say and Not As I Think: Parent Socialisation of Lie‐Telling Behaviour

This study explored parent (N = 146) perspectives about situations in which they think it is acceptable to lie, how this corresponds to how they socialise their children about lie‐telling and their children's actual behaviour. Results indicated the methods parents report using to teach their children about the acceptability of lie‐telling are consistent with what they report teaching their children about lie‐telling overall. Also, the frequency of lies that children told (N = 88) to protect themselves from psychological distress or conflict differed between those who were taught that lying is sometimes acceptable versus those taught it is never acceptable.