Deception detection: the act of selling a lie and exposing it.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the ability to distinguish between lies and truth and to distinguish between lies of omission and lies of commission. Twenty-four participants from the Hood College student body participated in the stimulus creation of this study. One hundred non-Hood student participants were recruited through social media, direct messaging, and advertising through Hood connections for the experimental section of this study. In the stimulus creation, participants would read a scenario involving something they have done wrong and plan out three statements: one in which they tell the truth, one in which they lie by commission, and the final in which they lie by omission. They were told to consider how they would respond to the event or incident if questioned by a figure of authority. The experimental task watched the videos the first participants created, and attempted to determine if the participant was telling the truth, lying by commission, or lying by omission They then described why they picked that answer and how confident they were in their response. Results showed that participants are much more confident and accurate when identifying truths. When participants were not confident, their signal detection criterion became very liberal, and they assumed more the videos were lying by commission. Finally, when participants were the most confident, they could determine more accurately lies of omission compared to lies of commission. This implies that people were able to easily recognize when someone was leaving out information or intentionally not saying incriminating words, but only when they were highly confident with themselves. When they did not have this confidence, it was assumed that most people were lying to them.