Detecting Lies via a Theme-Selection Strategy

Abstract

Most of deception research has focused on past events that were either completely truthful or a complete fabrication. However, people often tell a mixture of truths and lies. This could enable investigators to make within-subjects comparisons between different themes discussed in one interview, which we examined in the current experiment. Seventy-three participants took part in the experiment and were asked to either tell the truth about two themes, or to tell the truth about one theme and lie about the second theme in a HUMINT setting. Results showed that examining the differences in the amount of detail provided by the interviewees for each theme- obtained through a Theme-Selection strategy (a within-subjects measure)- yielded stronger results than examining differences between truth tellers and liars based on the entire interview without accounting for themes (between-subjects measure). The present study therefore highlighted the effectiveness of within-subjects measurements to both discriminate truth tellers from liars and to discover which section of a statement is false.

Sketching while narrating as a tool to detect deceit

“…Not a single veracity assessment tool (or nonverbal lie detection method) employs cut‐off scores and developing those should be the focus of deception researchers examining speech content. Recent research into “verbal baselining” is perhaps a step in the right direction (Palena, Caso, & Vrij, ; Schemmel, Maier, & Volbert, ; Verigin, Meijer, Vrij, & Zauzig, ).…”

Design Principles for Signal Detection in Modern Job Application Systems: Identifying Fabricated Qualifications

“…Normalizing responses within candidates and within question sets allows a system to perceive the individual's baseline "normal" behavior, even if magnitude levels vary by individuals or topics. Within-subject comparison can create greater objectivity compared to between-subject approaches [55].…”

When and how are lies told? And the role of culture and intentions in intelligence‐gathering interviews

“…We were interested in examining whether participants would provide a similar amount of detail for the truthful and false events. We are aware of only a few studies that examined a similar research question (Deeb et al, 2017;Palena, Caso, & Vrij, 2019;Verigin et al, 2019), but they used different designs and dependent variables and reached different conclusions. The study by Palena et al (2019) most closely resembled ours.…”

“…We are aware of only a few studies that examined a similar research question (Deeb et al, 2017;Palena, Caso, & Vrij, 2019;Verigin et al, 2019), but they used different designs and dependent variables and reached different conclusions. The study by Palena et al (2019) most closely resembled ours. The study involved truth-tellers reporting two events genuinely and lie-tellers lying about one of the events.…”