Abstract
Deception research has focused on identifying peripheral nervous system markers while ignoring cognitive mechanisms underlying those markers. Cognitive theorists argue that the process of deception may involve such constructs as attentional capture, working memory load, or perceived incongruity with memory, while psychophysiologists argue for stimulus salience, arousal, and emotion. Three studies were conducted to assess reaction time (RT) in relation to deception, response congruity, and preparedness to deceive. Similar to a semantic verification task, participants evaluated sentences that were either true or false, and then made truthful or deceptive evaluations of the sentence’s base truth-value. Findings indicate that deceptive responses have a longer RT than truthful responses, and that this relationship remains constant across response type and preparedness to deceive. The authors use these findings in preliminary support of a comprehensive cognitive model of deception.
Highlights
Background researchMost reaction time (RT) studies of deception were conducted in the 1920s and 1930s and have not been revisited [7,11,16,23,24,30,31,32]
Other researchers argued that the decreases Marston reported in RT had been due to confounding non-deceptive responses that
In order to assess the impact of deceptive responding and response congruity, a 2 × 2 ANOVA was performed using the RT data
Summary
Most reaction time (RT) studies of deception were conducted in the 1920s and 1930s and have not been revisited [7,11,16,23,24,30,31,32]. Marston conducted the first studies pertaining to RT and concluded that deception could cause either increases or decreases in RT [31,32,33]. J.M.C. Vendemia et al / Reaction times to deception occurred when they were unaware that their statements were false [11,16]. All participants’ RTs increased while they were aware that they were lying. Because of these studies, the “awareness” of prevarication has become central to its definition
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