Human Deception Research Articles

Manipulation, deception, the victim’s reasoning and her evidence

Abstract This paper rejects an argument defending the view that the boundary between deception and manipulation is such that some manipulations intended to cause false beliefs count as non-deceptive. On the strongest version of this argument, if a specific behaviour involves compromising the victim’s reasoning, then the behaviour is manipulative but not deceptive, and if it involves exposing the victim to misleading evidence that justifies her false belief, then it is deceptive but not manipulative. This argument has been consistently used as a reason to reject the traditional analysis of human deception, according to which intentionally causing someone to acquire a false belief is sufficient for deception. And because the traditional analysis is also consistent with our most basic intuitions about deception, it does matter whether this argument succeeds.

The ubiquity of long-tail lie distributions: seven studies from five continents

Abstract Truth-default theory (TDT), a theory of human deception and deception detection, has two propositions that focus on the overall rate of lying and individual variation in the frequency of lying behavior. The distribution of lie prevalence is specified to exhibit a non-normal, positively skewed distribution in which the majority of people are normatively honest, and most lies are told by a few prolific liars. Together, these predictions form the few prolific liars modules in TDT. Although the findings of prior research align with TDT predictions, the pan-cultural scope of TDT warrants testing such predictions with new and diverse samples. The current studies (total N = 3,463) sampled participants from China, Germany, Mexico, Israel, Kenya, Russia, and Brazil. Similar long-tail distributions were observed in each of the seven locations, and in language and cultural subsamples. These findings add to a growing empirical literature providing pan-cultural evidence consistent with TDT.

A Functional Analysis of Human Deception

Abstract A satisfactory analysis of human deception must rule out cases where it is a mistake or an accident that person B was misled by person A's behavior. Therefore, most scholars think that deceivers must intend to deceive. This article argues that there is a better solution: rather than appealing to the deceiver's intentions, we should appeal to the function of their behavior. After all, animals and plants engage in deception, and most of them are not capable of forming intentions. Accordingly, certain human behavior is deceptive if and only if its function is to mislead. This solves our problem because if the function of A's behavior was to mislead, B's ending up misled was not an accident or a mere mistake even if A did not intend to deceive B.

Aggressive Mimicry and the Evolution of the Human Cognitive Niche

The evolutionary origins of deception and its functional role in our species is a major focus of research in the science of human origins. Several hypotheses have been proposed for its evolution, often packaged under either the Social Brain Hypothesis, which emphasizes the role that the evolution of our social systems may have played in scaffolding our cognitive traits, and the Foraging Brain Hypothesis, which emphasizes how changes in the human dietary niche were met with subsequent changes in cognition to facilitate foraging of difficult-to-acquire foods. Despite substantive overlap, these hypotheses are often presented as competing schools of thought, and there have been few explicitly proposed theoretical links unifying the two. Utilizing cross-cultural data gathered from the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF), we identify numerous (n = 357) examples of the application of deception toward prey across 145 cultures. By comparing similar behaviors in nonhuman animals that utilize a hunting strategy known as aggressive mimicry, we suggest a potential pathway through which the evolution of deception may have taken place. Rather than deception evolving as a tactic for deceiving conspecifics, we suggest social applications of deception in humans could have evolved from an original context of directing these behaviors toward prey. We discuss this framework with regard to the evolution of other mental traits, including language, Theory of Mind, and empathy.

Meta Learning Based Deception Detection from Speech

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of detecting human deception, specifically by using speech cues. Indeed, several works attempt to detect deception from speech. Unfortunately, most works use the same people and environments in training and in testing. That is, they do not separate training samples from test samples according to the people who said each statement or by the environments in which each sample was recorded. This may result in less reliable detection results. In this paper, we take a meta-learning approach in which a model is trained on a variety of learning tasks to enable it to solve new learning tasks using only a few samples. In our approach, we split the data according to the persons (and recording environment), i.e., some people are used for training, and others are used for testing only, but we do assume a few labeled samples for each person in the data set. We introduce CHAML, a novel deep learning architecture that receives as input the sample in question along with two more truthful samples and non-truthful samples from the same person. We show that our method outperforms other state-of-the-art methods of deception detection based on speech and other approaches for meta-learning on our data-set. Namely, CHAML reaches an accuracy of 61.34% and an F1-Score of 0.3857, compared to an accuracy of only 55.82% and an F1-score of only 0.3444, achieved by a previous, most recent approach.

JURIDICAL IMPLICATIONS OF ISRAEL AND GIBEONITES’ TREATY IN JOSHUA 9:3-27: HONOURING ONE’S PROMISE

Concluding a treaty should lead to the realization of the existence of God as the absolute Being to whom all vows and promises are made. It should also promote human values, especially faithfulness, and trust. However, this goal is farfetched. Nowadays, it remains difficult to know which principles and values humanity still holds on to because of the constant breaking of vows and promises. The Gibeonites’ ruse shows human deception to honor its promises, and this endangers human society and its values. The failure to honor the promises threatens human society, for it brings about a lack of confidence and trust. Joshua’s faithfulness to the treaty calls for human faithfulness to its life commitment that promotes human and divine values. Faithfulness to treaties leads to the finding and confirmation of God’s perpetual presence and actions in human life. The paper calls on humanity to honor its promises and vows as a way of building a better human society grounded in faithfulness and confidence.

When Brain Tells the Deception: A Literature Review on Brain Electrical Oscillation Signature Profiling

Deception is all around us and lies are the basic form of deception. Deception ranges from the innocent lies of kids to terror-creating community lies. Deception is a common aspect of planet life. Deception can save a life from predators, for winning a mate, in securing meals, and to combat competitors. Deception is part of biological life. Deception can be found in birds, animals, and microbes. But, in humans, deception is not a part of biological activities. Human deception can be for survival or for escaping from the punishment of wrongdoing of them. Anyway, human deception is a trending topic in the science world. There are various techniques in the forensic psychology field to detect human deception. Polygraph, layered voice analyser, forensic Narcoanalysis, and brain electrical oscillation signature profiling, brain fingerprinting are the major deception detection techniques. This review article focuses on the theoretical perspectives and background of Brain Electrical Oscillation Signature Profiling. BEOS is an Indian lie detection tool, developed by Dr. C.R. Mukundan. BEOS is working on the principle of Autobiographical memory and semantic memory.

Acoustic-Prosodic and Lexical Cues to Deception and Trust: Deciphering How People Detect Lies

Humans rarely perform better than chance at lie detection. To better understand human perception of deception, we created a game framework, LieCatcher, to collect ratings of perceived deception using a large corpus of deceptive and truthful interviews. We analyzed the acoustic-prosodic and linguistic characteristics of language trusted and mistrusted by raters and compared these to characteristics of actual truthful and deceptive language to understand how perception aligns with reality. With this data we built classifiers to automatically distinguish trusted from mistrusted speech, achieving an F1 of 66.1%. We next evaluated whether the strategies raters said they used to discriminate between truthful and deceptive responses were in fact useful. Our results show that, although several prosodic and lexical features were consistently perceived as trustworthy, they were not reliable cues. Also, the strategies that judges reported using in deception detection were not helpful for the task. Our work sheds light on the nature of trusted language and provides insight into the challenging problem of human deception detection.

Solutions for counteracting human deception in social engineering attacks

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the top three cybersecurity issues in organizations related to social engineering and aggregate solutions for counteracting human deception in social engineering attacks. Design/methodology/approach A total of 20 experts within Information System Security Association participated in a three-round Delphi study for aggregating and condensing expert opinions. Three rounds moved participants toward consensus for solutions to counteract social engineering attacks in organizations. Findings Three significant issues: compromised data; ineffective practices; and lack of ongoing education produced three target areas for implementing best practices in countering social engineering attacks. The findings offer counteractions by including education, policies, processes and continuous training in security practices. Research limitations/implications Study limitations include lack of prior data on effective social engineering defense. Research implications stem from the psychology of human deception and trust with the ability to detect deception. Practical implications Practical implications relate to human judgment in complying with effective security policies and programs and consistent education and training. Future research may include exploring financial, operational and educational costs of implementing social engineering solutions. Social implications Social implications apply across all knowledge workers who benefit from technology and are trusted to protect organizational assets and intellectual property. Originality/value This study contributes to the field of cybersecurity with a focus on trust and human deception to investigate solutions to counter social engineering attacks. This paper adds to under-represented cybersecurity research regarding effective implementation for social engineering defense.

A new model of the development of deception: Disentangling the role of false‐belief understanding in deceptive ability

Abstract“Deception” is defined predominantly as the intentional attempt to create false‐beliefs in others. However, the intentionality behind early acts of deception and its relation to false‐belief understanding remain unresolved. In this article, we offer a three‐stage theoretical model of the development of deception in human ontogeny. We posit that at any age, human deception is an intentional action, but its form changes according to the level of the deceiver's intentionality. As the primary function of deception is to influence the behaviour of others, we argue that first‐stage deceptions‐in‐action involves only in the analysis of behaviours and perceptual access, not beliefs. In our view, the ability to deceive and false‐belief understanding are eventually inter‐connected, but false‐belief understanding is not essential for the earliest form of deception. Based on empirical findings, which suggest that by observing the results of early deceptions children build their knowledge of mental states as causes of human actions, we claim that the second stage of deception is representational deception. Further, as the understanding of beliefs becomes more advanced, the effectiveness of children's deception increases, and new forms of reflective deception (the third stage) emerge. Future directions for research are outlined, and limitations of the current model are discussed.

Mysteries and Myths in Human Deception and Deception Detection: Insights from Truth-Default Theory

This essay reviews some oddities, inconsistencies, and paradoxes evident in the social scientific literature on human deception detection. Major findings from the literature are surveyed. Contrasts are drawn between folk wisdom, the logic of dominant social scientific theory, and the conclusions drawn from extensive empirical findings. It is argued that Truth-Default Theory helps to reveal some persistent myths and it solves some otherwise perplexing mysteries in the social science of human deception and deception detection.

Toward a formal analysis of deceptive signaling

Deception has long been an important topic in philosophy (see Augustine in Treatises on various subjects, New York, Fathers of the Church, 1952; Kant in Practical philosophy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996; Chisholm and Feehan in J Philos 74: 143–159, 1977; Mahon in Int J Appl Philos 21: 181–194, 2007; Carson in Lying and deception, Oxford University Press, New York, 2010). However, the traditional analysis of the concept, which requires that a deceiver intentionally cause her victim to have a false belief, rules out the possibility of much deception in the animal kingdom. Cognitively unsophisticated species, such as fireflies and butterflies, have simply evolved to mislead potential predators and/or prey. To capture such cases of “functional deception,” several researchers (e.g., Sober, From a biological point of view, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994; Hauser in: Whiten, Byrne (eds) Machiavellian intelligence II, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 112–143, 1997; Searcy and Nowicki, The evolution of animal communication, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2005; Skyrms, Signals, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2010) have endorsed the broader view that deception only requires that a deceiver benefit from sending a misleading signal. Moreover, in order to facilitate game-theoretic study of deception in the context of Lewisian sender-receiver games, Brian Skyrms has proposed an influential formal analysis of this view. Such formal analyses have the potential to enhance our philosophical understanding of deception in humans as well as animals. However, as we argue in this paper, Skyrms’s analysis, as well as two recently proposed alternative analyses (viz., Godfrey-Smith in Review of signals: evolution, learning, and information by Brian Skyrms, Mind, 120: 1288–1297, 2001; McWhirter in Brit J Philos Sci 67: 757–780, 2016), are seriously flawed and can lead us to draw unwarranted conclusions about deception.

Verbal response time and duration indices of deception in humans interviewed by a computer-generated agent

To examine the relationship between verbal response time, response duration, and deception during an interview with a computer-generated agent, we developed a model using logistic regression conducted on a training group (n=90) and cross-validated the model on an additional 127 participants who either did or did not engage in a simulated crime at a mock security checkpoint. Verbal responses during the interviews required simple “yes” or “no” utterances, which examinees were instructed to produce “promptly” but not in a speeded manner. The results showed that, overall, 75 of 127 (59.1%) participants in the cross-validation group were correctly classified (p<.05). This result was due to the ability to correctly classify nondeceptive participants (specificity), and we interpreted this finding as being due to the presence of subpopulations of deceptive participants. Group analyses also revealed that response durations to mock crime-relevant questions were shorter when participants believed that a human was controlling the interview (p<.05), and that relative changes in response durations among different types of questions during the interview were related to deceptive status. The response duration shortening observed in the present study was attributed to variations in social dominance, motivational systems, or some combination of these factors.

Predatory Personalities as Behavioral Mimics and Parasites

Humans use a variety of deceptive tactics to extract resources from unsuspecting others. In this article, I suggest that much can be learned about patterns of human deception from predatory nonhuman animal behavior and parasitic infections. Nonhuman animals and parasitic infections utilize deceptive tactics to extract resources through two overarching strategies: (a) complex deception, slow resource extraction, heavy integration into a host or community, and low risk of detection, or (b) superficial deception, immediate resource extraction, little host or community specificity, and increased risk of detection. Predatory and parasitic human personalities may operate in analogous ways. Guided by analogies derived from nonhuman animal mimicry (such as color or behavioral deception) and micro-organismic infections, I have developed a theoretical framework to better understand deceptive and parasitic human behaviors as well as the characteristics defining them. Although applicable to areas of predatory and parasitic human behavior, two specific traits (psychopathy and Machiavellianism) are highlighted that have dire consequences for financial fraud, interpersonal harm, and organizational misbehavior.

Augustine on lying: A theoretical framework for the study of types of falsehood

This paper presents a theoretical investigation of the issue of lying from a semiotic perspective and its specific aim is the analysis of the theory of the lie as conceived by Aurelius Augustinus, bishop of Hippo (354–430 A.D.), also known as Augustine or St. Augustine. The latter devoted two short treatises to the issue of lying: De mendacio (On lying) and Contra mendacium (Against lying), written in ca. 395 DC and 420 DC, respectively. The paper will focus on duplicity and intention to deceive as fundamental and necessary features of the lie. Augustine’s chief contribution to the study of human deception was to have severed the assessment of what is a lie from factual falsity. For Augustine, at the kernel of the notion of lying lies the idea of intentionality. Following this line of thought, the paper singles out two types of intentionality, namely the intention to assert a falsehood and the intention to mislead. On the basis of this double nature of intentionality, the present paper seeks to outline a theoretical framework for the study of species of falsehoods. The outcome is a typology of untruthfulness that envisages a fourfold inventory of falsehoods based on the difference between jokes, errors, lies and pretences.

Discerning truth from deception: Human judgments and automation efforts

Recent improvements in effectiveness and accuracy of the emerging field of automated deception detection and the associated potential of language technologies have triggered increased interest in mass media and general public. Computational tools capable of alerting users to potentially deceptive content in computer–mediated messages are invaluable for supporting undisrupted, computer–mediated communication and information practices, credibility assessment and decision–making. The goal of this ongoing research is to inform creation of such automated capabilities. In this study we elicit a sample of 90 computer–mediated personal stories with varying levels of deception. Each story has 10 associated human deception level judgments, confidence scores, and explanations. In total, 990 unique respondents participated in the study. Three approaches are taken to the data analysis of the sample: human judges, linguistic detection cues, and machine learning. Comparable to previous research results, human judgments achieve 50–63 percent success rates, depending on what is considered deceptive. Actual deception levels negatively correlate with their confident judgment as being deceptive (r = -0.35, df = 88, ρ = 0.008). The highest-performing machine learning algorithms reach 65 percent accuracy. Linguistic cues are extracted, calculated, and modeled with logistic regression, but are found not to be significant predictors of deception level, confidence score, or an authors’ ability to fool a reader. We address the associated challenges with error analysis. The respondents’ stories and explanations are manually content–analyzed and result in a faceted deception classification (theme, centrality, realism, essence, self–distancing) and a stated perceived cue typology. Deception detection remains novel, challenging, and important in natural language processing, machine learning, and the broader library information science and technology community.

Receivers Limit the Prevalence of Deception in Humans: Evidence from Diving Behaviour in Soccer Players

Deception remains a hotly debated topic in evolutionary and behavioural research. Our understanding of what impedes or facilitates the use and detection of deceptive signals in humans is still largely limited to studies of verbal deception under laboratory conditions. Recent theoretical models of non-human behaviour have suggested that the potential outcome for deceivers and the ability of receivers to discriminate signals can effectively maintain their honesty. In this paper, we empirically test these predictions in a real-world case of human deception, simulation in soccer. In support of theoretical predictions in signalling theory, we show that cost-free deceit by soccer players decreases as the potential outcome for the signaller becomes more costly. We further show that the ability of receivers (referees) to detect deceptive signals may limit the prevalence of deception by soccer players. Our study provides empirical support to recent theoretical models in signalling theory, and identifies conditions that may facilitate human deception and hinder its detection.

Improving the monitoring of quantitative conditions of peacetime fuel stocks at pumping stations

The paper has solved the problem of optimizing the existing inefficient and irrational system of the quantitative monitoring of the situation in peacetime fuel supplies at the pumping stations in the Army of Serbia. A study of existing organizational forms, military pumping stations as well as civilian ones, was carried out. Based on the completion of the survey by competent persons in the military, the methods of expert evaluation and the obtained quantitative indicator of the tested models, a multicriteria optimization was performed in order to select the optimal model. The optimization of the existing models, in terms of efficiency and economy, would be the rationalization and modernization - automation of military capacity and greater reliance on automated civilian pumping stations. Introduction Within the framework of the undergoing reform of the Serbian Army and in order to reduce the total costs, it is necessary to optimize the existing supply system that is technologically outdated, inefficient and uneconomic. The problem of research in this paper is reduced to the selection of an optimal model of the quantitative monitoring of the state of peacetime stocks of fuel at the pumping stations in the Serbian Army, in order to ensure economical operation and efficient monitoring of available and issued quantities, aiming at better decision making and management in the supply system as well as at achieving faster system response, with greater reliance on government logistics. Organization of work and monitoring the fuel quantitative status at pumping stations The existing system of monitoring the quantitative state of fuel pumping stations in the Army of Serbia has the following disadvantages: getting unreliable data, due to outdated equipment for fuel handling and measuring equipment, and manual collection of data; creation of unauthorized shortages (due to subjective human error or deception); inadequate engagement of respective material and human resources. Optimization of quantitative monitoring of peacetime supplies of fuel at gas stations should aim at reducing the impact of the human factor, introducing automated quantitative monitoring of fuel condition with modern equipment for handling as well as applying technology for fast reading and dissemination of information and reports. Civilian pumping stations have been modernized gradually with new digital pump machines, systems for automated production and automated systems for measuring the fuel level in buried tanks. The objectives and criteria of the optimization of model monitoring In order to solve the problem of multi-criteria nature, the methods of operational research have been applied and the formalization of problem solving has been carried out. Models have been identified, criteria and subcriteria have been defined as well as respective criteria values, sub-criteria and weight coefficients for chosen variants in order to rank the alternatives - models. On the basis of the defined objectives and optimization approaches, the task of optimization to be solved is to choose one optimal model of monitoring the quantitative condition of peacetime stocks of fuels at gas stations, out of three variations or alternative models. Application of expert assessment and methods of analytical hierarchy process The problem was solved first 'manually', by using MS Excell, and after that by using the Expert Choice software package. The Expert Choice software package is based on the application of the method of analytical hierarchy process and combines the benefits that this method offers with the speed and visibility of computerized calculations and their result display. The purpose of the AHP method is to rank alternative decisions by their importance and to select the most acceptable alternative on the basis of a defined set of criteria and alternatives. The problem of determining the weight of criteria has been determined by applying the method of expert evaluation, along with interviewing and taking into account the competence of the interviewees. Conclusion The existing solutions in the system of logistics support, focused on the monitoring of the quantitative status of peacetime fuel supplies at the pumping stations in the Serbian Army, are not the product of system analysis and optimization. Therefore, it is not rational for them to get an IT support. The continuous task should thus be to monitor the phenomena and problems and their formalized description in order to create a foundation for their automation and successful problem solving.

Automatic, Multimodal Evaluation of Human Interaction

This article outlines an approach for automatically extracting behavioral indicators from video, audio, and text and explores the possibility of using those indicators to predict human-interpretable judgments of involvement, dominance, tension, and arousal. We utilized two-dimensional spatial inputs extracted from video, acoustic properties extracted from audio and verbal content transcribed from face-to-face interactions to construct a set of multimodal features. Multiple predictive models were created using the extracted features as predictors and human-coded perceptions of involvement, tenseness, and arousal as the criterion. These predicted perceptions were then used as independent variables in classifying truth and deception. Though the predicted values for perceptions performed comparably to human-coded perceptions in detecting deception, the results were not satisfying. Thus, the extracted multimodal features were used to predict deception directly. Classification accuracy was substantially higher than typical human deception detection performance. Through this research, we consider the feasibility and validity of the approach and identify how such an approach could contribute to the broader community.

Getting back to the rough ground: deception and 'social living'.

At the heart of the social intelligence hypothesis is the central role of 'social living'. But living is messy and psychologists generally seek to avoid this mess in the interests of getting clean data and cleaner logical explanations. The study of deception as intelligent action is a good example of the dangers of such avoidance. We still do not have a full picture of the development of deceptive actions in human infants and toddlers or an explanation of why it emerges. This paper applies Byrne & Whiten's functional taxonomy of tactical deception to the social behaviour of human infants and toddlers using data from three previous studies. The data include a variety of acts, such as teasing, pretending, distracting and concealing, which are not typically considered in relation to human deception. This functional analysis shows the onset of non-verbal deceptive acts to be surprisingly early. Infants and toddlers seem to be able to communicate false information (about themselves, about shared meanings and about events) as early as true information. It is argued that the development of deception must be a fundamentally social and communicative process and that if we are to understand why deception emerges at all, the scientist needs to get 'back to the rough ground' as Wittgenstein called it and explore the messy social lives in which it develops.