Deception Cues Research Articles

911 calls in death investigations: Indicators of veracity and deception

AbstractThe current study examined verbal cues of veracity and deception in 911 calls reporting homicides or suicides of another person. Specifically, the current study compared differences in the presence/absence and number of potential verbal indicators between a sample of deceptive callers who concealed their role in causing the person's death and truthful callers who did not cause the person's death. Results demonstrate consistency with previously proposed indicators of veracity and deception in 911 calls. More precisely, a greater number of self‐handicapping statements and descriptions of physical sensations were made by deceptive individuals, whereas truthtellers were more likely to spontaneously self‐correct inaccurate statements. Practical implications and limitations are discussed.

Nonverbal cues to deception: insights from a mock crime scenario in a Chinese sample.

Nonverbal behaviors could play a crucial role in detecting deception, yet existing studies on deception cues have largely centered on Western populations, predominantly university students, thus neglecting the influence of cultural and sample diversity. To address this gap, our study explored deception cues within an Asian cultural setting, utilizing a mock crime paradigm. Our sample comprised Chinese participants, including both men and women with various socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. Our findings revealed that compared to truth tellers, liars exhibited heightened emotions and an increased cognitive load. Furthermore, liars showed a higher frequency of self-adaptors and a longer duration of gaze aversion. Our findings contribute to a more profound understanding of deception cues within Asian culture and have implications for practical fields such as criminal interrogation.

The Brunswik Lens Model: a theoretical framework for advancing understanding of deceptive communication in autism.

Due to differences in social communication and cognitive functioning, autistic adults may have greater difficulty engaging in and detecting deception compared to neurotypical adults. Consequently, autistic adults may experience strained social relationships or face increased risk of victimization. It is therefore crucial that research investigates the psychological mechanisms that are responsible for autistic adults' difficulties in the deception process in order to inform interventions required to reduce risk. However, weaknesses of extant research exploring deception in autism include a heavy focus on children and limited theoretical exploration of underlying psychological mechanisms. To address these weaknesses, this review aims to introduce a system-level theoretical framework to the study of deception in autistic adulthood: The Brunswik Lens Model of Deception. Here, we provide a comprehensive account of how autism may influence all processes involved in deception, including: Choosing to Lie (1), Producing Deception Cues (2), Perceiving Deception Cues (3), and Making the Veracity Decision (4). This review also offers evidence-based, theoretical predictions and testable hypotheses concerning how autistic and neurotypical adults' behavior may differ at each stage in the deception process. The call to organize future research in relation to a joint theoretical perspective will encourage the field to make substantive, theoretically motivated progress toward the development of a comprehensive model of deception in autistic adulthood. Moreover, the utilization of the Brunswik Lens Model of Deception in future autism research may assist in the development of interventions to help protect autistic adults against manipulation and victimization.

The Language of Lies: An Analysis of Deceptive Linguistic Cues on Malaysian Investors’ Decision Making

In our technology-driven era, scams have become an increasingly pervasive threat, impacting countless individuals daily and causing not only financial losses but also emotional distress and a lack of trust in societal systems. Among the plethora of fraudulent activities, investment scams stand out as one of the top three reported types. These scams often involve scammers gaining the trust of victims through investment tutoring before soliciting money. This qualitative study aims to analyse the linguistic cues of deception embedded in investment scams’ promotional materials. The significance of this research lies in its focus on linguistic cues that utilise considerable influence over investment decision-making processes. The study used linguistic analysis to examine investment scam webpages from reputable organisations like the Securities Commission Malaysia (SC), the Central Bank of Malaysia (CBM), the Financial Consumer Alert List (FCA), and the Royal Malaysia Police (RMP). The qualitative analysis revealed different linguistic cues used, such as credibility enhancement, expressive language, cognitive biases, and framing effects. These findings illuminate how scammers manipulate language to shape investors’ perceptions of promotional materials. By offering insights into these deceptive tactics, the study equips individuals with the knowledge necessary to navigate financial environments with greater awareness and resilience, thereby serving as a crucial tool in the ongoing battle against investment fraud.

Unmasking Deception: Linguistic Cues Patterns Identification in Promotional Materials of Illegal Investment Scams

Misleading phraseology about illegal investment scams in promotional materials hinders financial sector regulation and investor protection. Understanding these tendencies and creating effective investor awareness measures are crucial. Using official-looking documents and websites that convey elitism and professionalism, illegal investment schemes make their huge profits seem more real. This study sought to understand how deceptive platforms lure potential investors. This was done by revealing deception strategies. Atlas.ti software was used to identify patterns of linguistic cues of deception presented in the promotional materials of illegal investment scams in this qualitative analysis. Eight themes emerged that illuminated intricate strategies used to create the illusion of authenticity and appeal in promotional materials. Beguiling Realism, Affective Ambivalence Techniques, Story Reconstructability, Unverified Spatial and Temporal Information, Dubious Clarity, Cognitive Operation, and Perceptual Information emerged from the analysis. This study impacted the government, public education, and economy to reveal the strategies utilised and prevent illegal investment schemes. The results show that the promotional materials create a false sense of credibility and legitimacy, the illusion that the scheme is profitable and credible, the illusion of personal connections and trust, and the impression of scarcity, which increases their exclusivity and demand to attract investors.

What have we learned about cues to deception? A survey of expert opinions

ABSTRACT Researchers have accumulated a substantial body of empirical work studying observable behaviors that might distinguish truth tellers from liars – that is, cues to deception. We report a survey of N = 50 deception cue experts – active researchers on deception – who provided their opinions on three issues: (1) What cues distinguish between truthful and deceptive statements? (2) What moderators influence the magnitude and direction of cues to deception? (3) What explanatory mechanisms of deception cues are best supported by research? The experts displayed agreement on few issues. Expert opinion on cues to deception, potential moderators, and explanatory mechanisms is mixed and often conflicting. The single issue on which more than 80% of experts agreed was that gaze aversion is not generally diagnostic of deception. This lack of consensus suggests that substantial work remains to be done before broad agreement can be established. It follows that any practical recommendation advocating the use of a specific deception cue cannot be widely representative of expert opinion.

Linguistic Cues of Deception in Malaysian Online Investment Scams’ Promotional Materials

Linguistic Cues of Deception in Malaysian Online Investment Scams’ Promotional Materials

Representation constraint‐based dual‐channel network for face antispoofing

AbstractAlthough multimodal face data have obvious advantages in describing live and spoofed features, single‐modality face antispoofing technologies are still widely used when it is difficult to obtain multimodal face images or inconvenient to integrate and deploy multimodal sensors. Since the live/spoofed representations in visible light facial images include considerable face identity information interference, existing deep learning‐based face antispoofing models achieve poor performance when only the visible light modality is used. To address the above problems, the authors design a dual‐channel network structure and a constrained representation learning method for face antispoofing. First, they design a dual‐channel attention mechanism‐based grouped convolutional neural network (CNN) to learn important deceptive cues in live and spoofed faces. Second, they design inner contrastive estimation‐based representation constraints for both live and spoofed samples to minimise the sample similarity loss to prevent the CNN from learning more facial appearance information. This increases the distance between live and spoofed faces and enhances the network's ability to identify deceptive cues. The evaluation results indicate that the framework we designed achieves an average classification error rate (ACER) of 2.37% on the visible light modality subset of the CASIA‐SURF dataset and an ACER of 2.4% on the CASIA‐SURF CeFA dataset, outperforming existing methods. The proposed method achieves low ACER scores in cross‐dataset testing, demonstrating its advantage in domain generalisation.

Detecting Deceptive Behaviours through Facial Cues from Videos: A Systematic Review

Interest in detecting deceptive behaviours by various application fields, such as security systems, political debates, advanced intelligent user interfaces, etc., makes automatic deception detection an active research topic. This interest has stimulated the development of many deception-detection methods in the literature in recent years. This work systematically reviews the literature focused on facial cues of deception. The most relevant methods applied in the literature of the last decade have been surveyed and classified according to the main steps of the facial-deception-detection process (video pre-processing, facial feature extraction, and decision making). Moreover, datasets used for the evaluation and future research directions have also been analysed.

Collective Bargaining and Strategic Disclosure in Earnings Conference Calls

Prior studies provide evidence that unionized firms tend to have more negative disclosure than non-unionized firms. These studies interpret this behavior as managers of unionized firms manipulating disclosure to gain an advantage in collective bargaining but do not directly test this assumption. An alternative explanation is that unionized firm managers disclose their union-deflated prospects. Using measures designed to represent disclosure manipulation, we find that (a) managers of unionized firms tend to script their answers in conference calls to a greater extent when union-related proprietary costs are higher, (b) unionized firm managers actively cast earnings calls with unfavorable analysts before labor negotiations, and (c) when union-related proprietary costs are higher, a larger share of managers’ negative language occurs in sentences with linguistic cues of deception. Our findings suggest that managers of unionized firms manipulate disclosure to mitigate union-related proprietary costs.

Two Truths and a Lie: Introduction to Deception Detection

ABSTRACT A plethora of research exists relating to active student learning, engagement, and pedagogical best practices. Unfortunately, related to auditing and forensic accounting, there are not many classroom activities aligning the aforementioned areas. This activity bridges said gap with an engaging exercise using the well-known “two truths and a lie” game. The activity's learning objectives include (1) identifying common signs of deception that may be present in interactions during auditing or forensic accounting engagements, (2) demonstrating the ability to determine when an individual may be using deception in interactions, and (3) demonstrating professional writing skills. Students create a short, simple video as a base for the activity, then engage in a subsequent review of assigned materials, group discussion, and an individual written self-reflection. Implementation results indicate this activity is a valuable learning experience, increases student knowledge about deception detection, and provides a unique platform for students to explore cues of deception.

911 calls in mysterious disappearances of children: Indicators of veracity and deception

Abstract911 calls reporting the mysterious disappearance of a child may contain information critical to law enforcement. If this information is untruthful, valuable resources can be misdirected and precious time may be lost. Therefore, the current study examined verbal cues of veracity and deception in 911 calls placed by caregivers of missing children. Specifically, the current study compared differences between a sample of caregivers who falsely reported a child missing to conceal their role in the child's homicide and truthful caregivers who reported a child missing and had no knowledge of the child's whereabouts at the time of the call. Results show promise and consistency with previously proposed indicators of veracity and deception. Specifically, a greater number of self‐handicapping statements were made by deceptive individuals, whereas truthtellers were more likely to spontaneously self‐correct. Practical implications are discussed.

Juveniles and adults differ in their beliefs about cues to deception and strategies during a hypothetical police interview

AbstractPolice officers are often trained to use the Behavior Analysis Interview (BAI) to detect deceit, but it is based on faulty indicators of lying that may be especially problematic for juveniles due to developmental immaturities. Juveniles, young adults, and adults were assigned to guilt or innocence conditions, read a criminal scenario, and self‐reported their likelihood of providing truthful and deceitful responses during a hypothetical BAI. All participants indicated they would give more truthful than deceptive responses. Guilty participants reported more use of strategies to appear innocent, while innocent participants said they would behave naturally. Juveniles were more likely to choose deceitful responses and say they would use strategies to appear innocent during a police interview but endorsed fewer stereotypical cues of deception compared to adults. Juveniles may not recognize how certain behaviors could be seen as cues to deception, which could put them at risk of being misidentified as guilty.

The Effect of Training on the Effectiveness of Deception Detection

Abstract The research conducted aims at determining the impact of short training on the trainee’s ability to detect deception with the use of non-instrumental methods of detection of deception. As the criminal procedure permits such methods of detection of deception, the results of the research are practical. The research was carried out on a group of participants given the task to watch a video recording and conclude whether the person presented told the truth or lied. Subsequently, the participants were given a short training on both verbal and non-verbal deception cues, illustrated with examples taken from the video they had watched. In the second leg of the test, the participants watched another video and decided whether the person presented was truthful or deceptive (on the grounds of deception cues they spotted). Th e results showed that the training improved participants’ ability to detect deception by c. 22%.

Why people keep falling for phishing scams: The effects of time pressure and deception cues on the detection of phishing emails

Lack of personalisation and poor mechanics (e.g., grammar, spelling and punctuation) are commonly cited as cues of deception that people can use to identify phishing emails. However, in an online email classification experiment (N = 472), we found no empirical evidence that the presence of these features was associated with better phishing email discrimination. We also manipulated time pressure and found that it significantly reduced detection accuracy. Participants rarely inspected the URLs associated with links in the phishing emails but, when they did, their detection performance improved. Better performance in distinguishing between genuine and phishing emails was linked to lower levels of an intuitive decision-making style and relatively lower education levels amongst a highly educated sample. Older participants and those with greater computer proficiency and stronger email habit showed a slight increase in tendency to judge emails as suspicious. The results are discussed in terms of intervention strategies such as cyber security training to improve resilience to phishing attacks.

Verbal vs. Nonverbal Cues in Static and Dynamic Contexts of Fraud Detection in Crowdsourcing

As an important mode of open innovation, crowdsourcing can effectively integrate external resources, enabling enterprises to obtain stronger competitiveness and more benefits at a faster speed and lower cost. However, this mode has inevitable intellectual property protection challenges, especially on contest-based crowdsourcing platforms. Previous studies mostly focused on the protection of the rights of sponsors while ignoring the rights of workers, rarely paying attention to sponsor fraud, which may reduce the enthusiasm of participants and eventually turn crowdsourcing;' into a lemon market. This study proposes several fraud detection models to address this problem on contest-based crowdsourcing platforms. Furthermore, this paper explores and compares the value of four types of information as deception cues in crowdsourcing contexts via data mining technology and machine learning methods. The results benefit participants in crowdsourcing markets and contribute to fraud detection research and open innovation in the knowledge economy.

Words Matter: The Role of Readability, Tone, and Deception Cues in Online Credit Markets

AbstractUsing debt crowdfunding data, we investigate whether borrowers’ writing style is associated with an online lender and borrower behaviors, whether the information contained in linguistic style can mitigate information asymmetry in peer-to-peer markets, and whether online investors correctly interpret the economic value of written texts. Peer-to-peer lenders bid more aggressively, are more likely to fund, and charge lower rates to online borrowers whose writing is more readable, more positive, and contains fewer deception cues. Moreover, such borrowers are less likely to default. Online investors, however, fail to fully account for the information contained in borrowers’ writing.

Emojis in Deceptive Online Communication: The Frequency and Type of Emoji in Deceptive and NonDeceptive Online Messages

Background: Little research has been done on nonverbal deception cues in computer-mediated communication (CMC). However, deception is a daily occurrence and since much communication is shifting towards CMC, it is important to understand the difference between truthful and deceptive messages. Objective: This research obtained more insight in the use of emoji in deceptive messages by answering the question: Are the frequency and type of emoji different in deceptive compared to truthful online messages? Methods: Participants sent three screenshots of deceptive, and truthful messages to WhatsApp. The used emoji were counted and sorted into levels of valence (positive, negative, and neutral) and intensity (strong versus weak). Results: The results indicated that participants used more negative, weak emoji in deceptive compared with truthful messages and more positive, weak, and strong emoji in truth compared with deceit. No difference was found for the emoji frequency. Discussion: The results are discussed in the light of earlier research. However, this is the first study investigating the use of emoji in the context of computer-mediated deception. Conclusion: The type of emoji can be indicative of used as a nonverbal deception cue in online messages.

Deception Cues During High-Risk Situations: 911 Homicide Calls

During everyday interactions, cues tend to be weakly related to deception. However, there are theoretical reasons to suspect that such cues will be more prominent during high-risk interactions. The current study explored deception cues during one particular high-risk interaction—911 homicide calls placed by adults. In Sample 1, judges coded 911 homicide calls (n = 82) by Q-sorting 86 cues. Results indicated that deceptive callers tended to display emotional cues (e.g., self-dramatizing, moody, worried, emotional, nervous), appeared overwhelmed, and related narratives that lacked structure, clarity, and focus. Judges coded a separate sample of 911 calls (n = 64), and deception scores were computed using a template-matching approach based on the findings from Sample 1. Results indicated that deceptive 911 callers had higher deception scores than honest callers. The effect sizes yielded in this study highlight the relevance of deception cues during high-risk interactions and the usefulness of the person-centered Q-sort method.

Innocent until proven guilty: suspicion of deception in online reviews

PurposeThis study aims to formulate a new framework for identifying deception in consumer reviews through the lens of interpersonal deception theory (IDT) and the persuasion knowledge model (PKM). It evaluates variables contributing to consumer intentions to purchase after reading deceptive reviews and proposes deception identification cues to be incorporated into the interpersonal communication theoretical framework.Design/methodology/approachThe first study is qualitative and quantitative, based on sentiment and lexical analysis of 1,000 consumer reviews. The second study uses the US national consumer survey with a partial least squares partial least squares-structural equation modeling and a process-based mediation–moderation analysis.FindingsThis study shows deceptive characteristics that cannot be dissimulated by reviewing consumers that represent review legitimacy based on review valence, authenticity, formalism and analytical writing. The results also support the central role of consumer suspicion of an ulterior motive, with a direct and mediation effect regarding consumer emotions and intentions, including brand trust and purchase intentions.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper presents a new framework for identifying deception in consumer reviews based on IDT and PKM, adding new theoretical elements that help adapt these theories to written digital communication specificities. This study clarifies the role of suspicion in a deceptive communication context and shows the variables contributing to consumers’ purchase intention after reading deceptive reviews. The results also emphasize the benefits of lexical analysis in identifying deceptive characteristics of reviews.Practical implicationsCompanies can consider the vulnerability of certain generations based on lower levels of suspicions and different linguistic cues to detect deception in reviews. Long-term, marketers can also implement deception identification practices as potential new business models and opportunities.Social implicationsPolicymakers and regulators need to consider critical deception cues and the differences in suspicion levels among segments of consumers in the formulation of preventative and deception management measures.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the literature by formulating a new framework for identifying deception in consumer reviews, adapted to the characteristics of written digital communication. This study emphasizes deception cues in electronic word-of-mouth and provides additional opportunities for theorizing deception in electronic communication.