Conversing with a devil’s advocate: Interpersonal coordination in deception and disagreement

Abstract

This study investigates the presence of dynamical patterns of interpersonal coordination in extended deceptive conversations across multimodal channels of behavior. Using a novel "devil’s advocate" paradigm, we experimentally elicited deception and truth across topics in which conversational partners either agreed or disagreed, and where one partner was surreptitiously asked to argue an opinion opposite of what he or she really believed. We focus on interpersonal coordination as an emergent behavioral signal that captures interdependencies between conversational partners, both as the coupling of head movements over the span of milliseconds, measured via a windowed lagged cross correlation (WLCC) technique, and more global temporal dependencies across speech rate, using cross recurrence quantification analysis (CRQA). Moreover, we considered how interpersonal coordination might be shaped by strategic, adaptive conversational goals associated with deception. We found that deceptive conversations displayed more structured speech rate and higher head movement coordination, the latter with a peak in deceptive disagreement conversations. Together the results allow us to posit an adaptive account, whereby interpersonal coordination is not beholden to any single functional explanation, but can strategically adapt to diverse conversational demands.

Body synchrony in triadic interaction

“…The general finding that body movement shows patterns of synchrony between dyads has been shown in several studies (e.g. [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]). The same tendency towards interactive synchrony has also been shown in other types of human behaviour such as eye movements [22], expressive emotion [23], speech-related convergence [24][25][26][27][28], and more.…”

Classifying Conversational Entrainment of Speech Behavior: An Expanded Framework and Review

“…Priva and Sanker (2019) introduced a different approach, linear combination, which accounts for the acoustic-prosodic features of an interlocutor using both their own baseline features and the baseline features of their conversation partner. Other studies still have advanced more complex measures such as cross-recurrence quantification analysis (CRQA), a non-linear technique, that quantifies how often and for how long the speech of conversational partners visit similar states (e.g., Borrie et al, 2019;Duran & Fusaroli, 2017, Fusaroli & Tylen, 2016. In another line of research, studies rely on perceptual measures, utilizing naïve listeners who judge the similarity of the speech between conversation partners.…”

“…Borrie et al (2019);Borrie et al (2020a);Duran & Fusaroli (2017);Fusaroli & Tylen (2016) CRQA between feature values of interlocutorsAguilar et al (2016); Pardo et al (2010); Pardo et al (2018); AXB paradigm in which utterances produced by one interlocutor are perceptually compared to items produced by their partner before and during the conversation Priva et al (2017); Priva & Sanker (2018) Priva & Sanker (2019) Linear combination analysis of mean feature values of interlocutors Levitan & Hirschberg (2011); Levitan et al (2012) t-tests comparing differences between mean feature values of conversation partners and non-partners Reichel et al (2018) Linear mixed models comparing the absolute difference between feature values of randomly drawn turns of conversation partners in real and sham conversations Static Local Proximity Borrie et al (2015); Levitan & Hirschberg (2011); Levitan et al (2015); Lubold & Pon-Barry…”

The impact of student facilitation on student engagement in asynchronous online discussion

“…Case study and role play provided students with real-life situations, which empowered them to analyze issues and solve practical problems (Sadaf & Olesova, 2017), and encouraged thinking from broader perspectives (Cornelius, Gordon, & Harris, 2011). Debate and devil's advocate allowed participants to critically think about the materials and apply the knowledge that they had gained by simulating ethical issues professionals may encounter and encouraging empathy for alternate points of view (Duran & Fusaroli, 2017;Pilkington & Walker, 2003).…”

“…Second, the devil's advocate strategy can be useful. The strategy requires students to selectively deceive each other and potentially argue a point that they do not believe for the sake of deeper discussion and enhanced critical thinking (Duran & Fusaroli, 2017). Third, debates allow students to constructively challenge one another for learning through discussion (Pilkington & Walker, 2003).…”