Cultural differences in the efficacy of unexpected questions, sketching, and timeline methods in eliciting cues to deception.

Asking unexpected questions, asking the interviewee to sketch the room, and asking the interviewee to make a timeline are techniques that have been shown to help an interviewer detect deceit. However, evidence of the efficacy of these techniques comes from studies of North American and North-West European participants, who are on average more individualistic (i.e., value individual achievements and uniqueness over group achievements) than people from other parts of the world. In two experiments involving participants with individualistic and collectivistic cultural backgrounds, we provide a more culturally diverse test of these techniques. Specifically, this study describes two experiments that investigated these interviewing techniques with people who are recent migrants to the UK. Experiment 1 used the LIWC categories "I," "we," "cognitive processes," and "social processes" as the dependent variables; Experiment 2 measured details provided in a sketch and a timeline. The results show no effects of veracity in either of these experiments, although various effects of cultural differences in the outcome variables were observed. This suggests that cues to deception may not necessarily generalize to people from different cultural backgrounds. These results highlight the importance of conducting lie detection research across different countries and cultures.

The Psychological Science Accelerator's COVID-19 rapid-response dataset.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Psychological Science Accelerator coordinated three large-scale psychological studies to examine the effects of loss-gain framing, cognitive reappraisals, and autonomy framing manipulations on behavioral intentions and affective measures. The data collected (April to October 2020) included specific measures for each experimental study, a general questionnaire examining health prevention behaviors and COVID-19 experience, geographical and cultural context characterization, and demographic information for each participant. Each participant started the study with the same general questions and then was randomized to complete either one longer experiment or two shorter experiments. Data were provided by 73,223 participants with varying completion rates. Participants completed the survey from 111 geopolitical regions in 44 unique languages/dialects. The anonymized dataset described here is provided in both raw and processed formats to facilitate re-use and further analyses. The dataset offers secondary analytic opportunities to explore coping, framing, and self-determination across a diverse, global sample obtained at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which can be merged with other time-sampled or geographic data.

Prosocial rule breaking, ingroups and social norms: Parental decision-making about COVID-19 rule breaking in the UK.

The British public generally adhered to COVID-19-related restrictions, but as the pandemic drew on, it became challenging for some populations. Parents with young children were identified as a vulnerable group. We collected rich, mixed-methods survey data from 99 UK-based parents (91 mothers) of children under 12, who described their lockdown transgressions. Household mixing was the most prevalent broken rule. Template analysis found that rule breaking was driven by 'ingroup-level' prosocial motivations to protect the mental and social health of family and loved ones, and that parents were 'engaged' decision-makers who underwent careful deliberation when deciding to break rules, making trade-offs, bending rules, mitigating risks, reaching consensus, and reacting to perceived rule injustices. Cumulative link models found that the perceived reasonableness of rule violations was predicted by social norms. Rules were broken by parents not for antisocial reasons, but for 'ingroup-level' prosocial reasons, linked to supporting loved ones.

An Inventory of Problems-29 (IOP-29) study investigating feigned schizophrenia and random responding in a British community sample.

Compared to other Western countries, malingering research is still relatively scarce in the United Kingdom, partly because only a few brief and easy-to-use symptom validity tests (SVTs) have been validated for use with British test-takers. This online study examined the validity of the Inventory of Problems-29 (IOP-29) in detecting feigned schizophrenia and random responding in 151 British volunteers. Each participant took three IOP-29 test administrations: (a) responding honestly; (b) pretending to suffer from schizophrenia; and (c) responding at random. Additionally, they also responded to a schizotypy measure (O-LIFE) under standard instruction. The IOP-29's feigning scale (FDS) showed excellent validity in discriminating honest responding from feigned schizophrenia (AUC = .99), and its classification accuracy was not significantly affected by the presence of schizotypal traits. Additionally, a recently introduced IOP-29 scale aimed at detecting random responding (RRS) demonstrated very promising results.

The first direct replication on using verbal credibility assessment for the detection of deceptive intentions.

Verbal deception detection has gained momentum as a technique to tell truth-tellers from liars. At the same time, researchers' degrees of freedom make it hard to assess the robustness of effects. Replication research can help evaluate how reproducible an effect is. We present the first replication in verbal deception research whereby ferry passengers were instructed to tell the truth or lie about their travel plans. The original study found truth-tellers to include more specific time references in their answers. The replication study that closely mimicked the setting, procedure, materials, coding, and analyses found no lie-truth difference for specific time references. Although the power of our replication study was suboptimal (0.77), Bayesian statistics showed evidence in favor of the null hypothesis. Given the great applied consequences of verbal credibility tests, we hope this first replication attempt ignites much needed preregistered, high-powered, multilab replication efforts.

Jumping the gun: Faster response latencies to deceptive questions in a realistic scenario.

Most theories of lie detection assume that lying increases cognitive load, resulting in longer response latencies during questioning. However, the studies supporting this theory are typically laboratory-based, in settings with no specific validity in security contexts. Consequently, using virtual reality (VR), we investigated how response latencies were influenced in an ecologically valid environment of interest to security professionals. In a highly realistic airport security terminal presented in VR, a security officer asked participants yes/no questions about their belongings. We found that liars actually responded more quickly to questions on which they were lying than to questions on which they were telling the truth. A control group, who answered the same questions but were not lying, answered equally quickly for all questions. We argue that this decrease in response time is possibly an unconscious reaction to questions on which individuals must answer deceptively. These results call into question the generalizability of previous research and highlight the importance of ecological validity when researching lie detection. These findings also uncover a new potential tool for enhancing lie detection in real-world scenarios.

The effect of question expectedness and experience on lying about intentions.

In recent years researchers have started to focus on lying about intentions (Granhag, 2010). In the present experiment participants were interviewed about their forthcoming trip. We tested the hypothesis that liars (N=43) compared to truth tellers (N=43) would give fewer details to unexpected questions about planning, transportation and the core event, but an equal amount or more detail to expected questions about the purpose of the trip. We also tested the hypothesis that participants who had previously experienced the intention (i.e., they had made such a trip before) would give more detail than those who had never experienced the intended action. The unexpected question hypothesis was supported, whereas the previous experience effect only emerged in interactions. The benefit of using different types of questions for lie detection purposes is discussed.

Thermal imaging as a lie detection tool at airports.

We tested the accuracy of thermal imaging as a lie detection tool in airport screening. Fifty-one passengers in an international airport departure hall told the truth or lied about their forthcoming trip in an interview. Their skin temperature was recorded via a thermal imaging camera. Liars' skin temperature rose significantly during the interview, whereas truth tellers' skin temperature remained constant. On the basis of these different patterns, 64% of truth tellers and 69% of liars were classified correctly. The interviewers made veracity judgements independently from the thermal recordings. The interviewers outperformed the thermal recordings and classified 72% of truth tellers and 77% of liars correctly. Accuracy rates based on the combination of thermal imaging scores and interviewers' judgements were the same as accuracy rates based on interviewers' judgements alone. Implications of the findings for the suitability of thermal imaging as a lie detection tool in airports are discussed.