Abstract
In the present study, we examined the pupillary response of White participants who were asked to tell the truth or lie to White or Black partners. Research on cues to deception has assumed that lying is more cognitively demanding that truth telling. In line with this assumption, previous studies have shown that lying is associated with greater pupil dilation, a behavioral cue that typically manifests itself under conditions of stress or cognitive effort. In accordance with these results, we predicted greater pupil dilation when lying than when telling the truth. Furthermore, pupil dilation was expected to be greater when responding to White than Black partners. Finally, we hypothesized that pupil dilation would be greater when lying to White than Black partners. Participants were instructed to answer a set of questions, half truthfully and half deceptively. They were led to believe that White vs. Black partners (one male and one female) would ask the questions via computer connection. Indeed, we used feminine and masculine synthetic voices. Pupil dilation was assessed with a remote eye-tracking system. Results provided support for the first two hypotheses. However, the predicted interaction between race of partners and truth status of message (lying vs. telling the truth) was nonsignificant. Our findings highlight the importance of considering race in the study of truthful and deceptive communications.
Highlights
Lying is a significant part of our daily social life [e.g., 1]
We argued that White participants’ affective and cognitive processes involved in deceptive and truthful responses directed at White and Black partners may diverge, activating different physiological or behavioral responses
We examined the pupillary response of White participants who were asked to tell the truth or lie to White or Black interaction partners
Summary
Lying is a significant part of our daily social life [e.g., 1]. One of the first studies about the role of lies in everyday life found that people tell on average one or two lies each day [2]. Pupillary response and activation of left anterior insular cortex of both White and Black participants were greater when they were exposed to own-race than to other-race pain These results suggest that human beings are especially motivated to pay attention to and preferentially maintain social bonds with fellow ingroup members. Research has found that attentional resources are preferentially allocated to high-status individuals [e.g., 63, 65] Overall, both the argument of greater concern for the ingroup and the argument of sensitivity to social status suggest that greater cognitive effort (greater pupil dilation) should be involved when White participants’ truthfulness is judged by White than by Black counterparts. Pupil dilation as a cue to deception in interactions with White and Black partners to renewed manifestations of prejudice and nationalist sentiments [see 66, 67], making the categorization based on race as especially meaningful
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