False impressions? The effect of language proficiency on cues, perceptions, and lie detection.

Abstract

We examined how observers’ impressions of nonnative speakers and their cues to deception affected decision-making. Native and nonnative English speakers lied or told the truth about having committed a transgression, and then observers attempted to detect their lies. Observers were better able to discriminate between lie- and truth-telling native speakers than nonnative speakers. They also held more positive impressions of native speakers than nonnative speakers. Unlike observers, trained coders identified a multitude of differences in interviewees’ presentation of cues to deception across proficiency groups. Overall, nonnative speakers appear to be at a significant disadvantage in lie-detection contexts.

Do Accents Speak Louder Than Words? Perceptions of Linguistic Speech Characteristics on Deception Detection

“…In other words, beginner English speakers were judged differently relative to their more proficient counterparts. Although we expected native observers to judge native speakers more favorably, our results partially replicated Bond and Atoum (2000) and Elliott and Leach (2022), who found that observers demonstrated a truth bias toward non-native speakers. Bond and Atoum attributed this finding to observers automatically giving low-proficiency speakers the benefit of the doubt, resulting in lower discrimination ability.…”