Abstract
Deception studies emphasize the important role of event-related potentials (ERPs) to uncover deceptive behavior based on underlying neuro-cognitive processes. The role of conflict monitoring as indicated by the frontal N2 component during truthful and deceptive responses was investigated in an adapted Concealed Information Test (CIT). Previously memorized pictures of faces should either be indicated as truthfully trustworthy, truthfully untrustworthy or trustworthy while concealing the actual untrustworthiness (untrustworthy-probe). Mean, baseline-to-peak and peak-to-peak amplitudes were calculated to examine the robustness of ERP findings across varying quantification techniques. Data of 30 participants (15 female; age: M = 23.73 years, SD = 4.09) revealed longer response times and lower correct rates for deceptive compared to truthful trustworthy responses. The frontal N2 amplitude was more negative for untrustworthy-probe and truthful untrustworthy compared to truthful trustworthy stimuli when measured as mean or baseline-to-peak amplitude. Results suggest that deception evokes conflict monitoring and ERP quantifications are differentially sensitive to a-priori hypotheses.
Highlights
Research addressing the underlying neuro-cognitive processes of deception emphasizes the promising role of cognitive-motivational processes and event-related potentials (ERP) of the electroencephalogram (EEG) to differentiate between truthful and deceptive behavior (Johnson et al, 2004, 2008; Wu et al, 2009; Leue et al, 2012a; Meijer et al, 2014; Leue and Beauducel, 2015, 2019; Fu et al, 2017)
Simple contrasts revealed a significantly more negative N2 amplitude for untrustworthy-probes compared to truthful trustworthy pictures, F(1, 26) = 7.01, p = 0.01, ηp2 = 0.21, and for truthful untrustworthy pictures compared to truthful trustworthy pictures, F(1, 26) = 8.27, p = 0.01, ηp2 =
Simple contrasts revealed a significantly more negative N2 amplitude for untrustworthy-probes compared to truthful trustworthy pictures, F(1, 26) = 6.11, p = 0.02, ηp2 = 0.19, and for truthful untrustworthy pictures compared to truthful trustworthy pictures, F(1, 26) = 5.18, p = 0.03, ηp2 = 0.17, but not for untrustworthy-probe compared to truthful untrustworthy pictures, F(1, 26) = 0.01, p = 0.92 (Table 2)
Summary
Research addressing the underlying neuro-cognitive processes of deception emphasizes the promising role of cognitive-motivational processes and event-related potentials (ERP) of the electroencephalogram (EEG) to differentiate between truthful and deceptive behavior (Johnson et al, 2004, 2008; Wu et al, 2009; Leue et al, 2012a; Meijer et al, 2014; Leue and Beauducel, 2015, 2019; Fu et al, 2017). Deception should elicit more conflict monitoring in subjects the greater the discrepancy between actual perceived expressions of trustworthiness and the deceptive response This assumption is consistent with the argumentation of Berlyne (1957) and Botvinick et al (2001), who suggest in the context of the conflict-monitoring hypothesis that the conflict level increases with the absolute activation level of competing representations and becomes maximal when they are equal. In addition to the stimulus-related conflict between probes and truthful (un-)trustworthy faces, we introduce the affective compared to the neutral condition of the faces as another operationalization of conflicting or competing representations as presumed by Botvinick et al (2001) for non-deception tasks. We hypothesize larger (more negative) frontal N2 amplitudes following untrustworthyprobes compared to truthful stimuli in the affective vs. neutral condition (hypothesis 2)
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