Abstract
Findings from the deception detection literature suggest that although people are not skilled in consciously detecting a liar, they may intuit that something about the person telling a lie is off. In the current proposal, we argue that observing a liar influences the observer’s physiology even though the observer may not be consciously aware of being lied to (i.e., the observers’ direct deception judgment does not accurately differentiate between liars and truth-tellers). To test this hypothesis, participants’ finger temperature will be measured while they watch videos of persons who are either honest or dishonest about their identity. We hypothesize that skin temperature will be lower when observing a liar than when observing a truth-teller. Additionally, we test whether perceiving a liar influences finger skin temperature differently when an individual is, or is not, alerted to the possibility of deceit. We do this by varying participants’ awareness of the fact that they might be lied to. Next to measuring physiological responses to liars and truth-tellers, self-reported direct and indirect veracity judgments (i.e., trustworthiness and liking) of the target persons will be assessed. We hypothesize that indirect veracity judgments will better distinguish between liars and truth-tellers than direct veracity judgments.
Highlights
Albrechtsen et al (2009) found that intuitive judgments of deception were more accurate than deliberative judgments. These authors found that automatic judgments made when conscious attention was directed at a concurrent task were more accurate than judgments made after conscious reasoning about ones deception judgment. These findings suggest that, on some level, people intuit that www.frontiersin.org van ’t Veer et al Unconscious deception detection they are being lied to while they are forming an impression of a liar
Whereas we propose to focus on the observer of a liar, to date, more is known about the physiology of liars themselves
THE PROPOSED RESEARCH In the proposed study, we aim to explore whether skin temperature is influenced by observing liars and truth-tellers and whether temperature relates to self-reported judgments of these liars and truth-tellers
Summary
We will ask participants to rate both their liking and trustworthiness of liars and truth-tellers, as indirect measures, and their direct veracity judgment. We thereby examine whether forming an impression of a liar compared to a truth-teller, even when not having a conscious goal of detecting deception, is accompanied by physiological states that can be differentiated by measuring finger temperature.
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