Abstract
The faculty of language allows humans to state falsehoods in their choice of words. However, while what is said might easily uphold a lie, how it is said may reveal deception. Hence, some features of the voice that are difficult for liars to control may keep speech mostly, if not always, honest. Previous research has identified that speech timing and voice pitch cues can predict the truthfulness of speech, but this evidence has come primarily from laboratory experiments, which sacrifice ecological validity for experimental control. We obtained ecologically valid recordings of deceptive speech while observing natural utterances from players of a popular social deduction board game, in which players are assigned roles that either induce honest or dishonest interactions. When speakers chose to lie, they were prone to longer and more frequent pauses in their speech. This finding is in line with theoretical predictions that lying is more cognitively demanding. However, lying was not reliably associated with vocal pitch. This contradicts predictions that increased physiological arousal from lying might increase muscular tension in the larynx, but is consistent with human specialisations that grant Homo sapiens sapiens an unusual degree of control over the voice relative to other primates. The present study demonstrates the utility of social deduction board games as a means of making naturalistic observations of human behaviour from semi-structured social interactions.
Highlights
Deception is a widespread and fundamental aspect of communication, that has been observed across a wide range of species
We observed the natural speech of players of a popular social deduction board game, in which players are assigned roles that either promote honest or dishonest interactions but otherwise engage in free conversation
Deceptive speech was more likely to contain filled pauses (e.g. “umm” or “uhhh”; χ2 (1) = 9.13, p = 0.003, estimate = 1.06, CI = [0.39–1.73]) to such an extent that too few filled pauses were observed in truthful statements (5.9%) to support a meaningful test of filled pause durations
Summary
Deception is a widespread and fundamental aspect of communication, that has been observed across a wide range of species. While the flexibility of human communication through the faculty of language provides particular opportunities for deception, an anthropocentric perspective on lying may be overly limiting. It is a general principle that systems of communication are only adaptive if they are on average honest. The interests of the individual often incentivise deception [1,2]. The honesty-on-average of communication comes from some constraint on the effectiveness of deception, such as the physical, physiological, or cognitive limitations of the deceiver [3,4]. In the context of human speech, what is said might uphold a lie, but how it is said may reveal deception
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