Neurocognitive mechanisms underlying deceptive hazard evaluation: An event-related potentials investigation

Abstract

Deceptive behavior is common in human social interactions. Researchers have been trying to uncover the cognitive process and neural basis underlying deception due to its theoretical and practical significance. We used Event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the neural correlates of deception when the participants completed a hazard judgment task. Pictures conveying or not conveying hazard information were presented to the participants who were then requested to discriminate the hazard content (safe or hazardous) and make a response corresponding to the cues (truthful or deceptive). Behavioral and electrophysiological data were recorded during the entire experiment. Results showed that deceptive responses, compared to truthful responses, were associated with longer reaction time (RT), lower accuracy, increased N2 and reduced late positive potential (LPP), suggesting a cognitively more demanding process to respond deceptively. The decrement in LPP correlated negatively with the increment in RT for deceptive relative to truthful responses, regardless of hazard content. In addition, hazardous information evoked larger N1 and P300 than safe information, reflecting an early processing bias and a later evaluative categorization process based on motivational significance, respectively. Finally, the interaction between honesty (truthful/deceptive) and safety (safe/hazardous) on accuracy and LPP indicated that deceptive responses towards safe information required more effort than deceptive responses towards hazardous information. Overall, these results demonstrate the neurocognitive substrates underlying deception about hazard information.

The Effects of Money on Fake Rating Behavior in E-Commerce: Electrophysiological Time Course Evidence From Consumers

“…The N2 component, as aforementioned in the introduction section, could reflect the process of detecting conflicting information (Van Veen and Carter, 2002 ; Ma et al, 2007 , 2010 ; Folstein and Van Petten, 2008 ; Lahat et al, 2013 ), for which stronger cognitive conflicts induce larger N2 amplitudes (Fu et al, 2017 ). Monetary incentives make participants less sensitive to conflict or distress by communal values, which increases the likelihood of self-interested or immoral behavior (Cullen et al, 1985 ; Agnew, 1994 ; Vohs et al, 2006 , 2008 ; Kouchaki et al, 2013 ).…”

“…A fake rating is a rating not in line with the truth. Thus, giving a fake rating is similar to deception, which in many cases is a type of immoral behavior and may result in greater cognitive conflict than giving a truthful rating, which could be reflected by the N2 component (Wu et al, 2009 ; Suchotzki et al, 2015 ; Fu et al, 2017 ). Moreover, a related goal for the consumers, such as earning a certain amount of monetary reward and maintaining good interpersonal relationship, could not only alleviate the perceptual conflict but also prompt them to have greater incentives to give fake high-score ratings, which would be indicated by a smaller N2 and a larger LPP amplitude.…”

“…In a study of immoral behaviors, Lahat et al ( 2013 ) observed larger N2 amplitudes in response to moral violations than in response to conventional violations, and Yoder and Decety ( 2014 ) used a conflict-monitoring standpoint to explain the N2 component that is elicited by morally good and bad actions. Furthermore, researches have shown that compared with telling the truth, lying evokes greater N2 amplitudes (Wu et al, 2009 ; Suchotzki et al, 2015 ; Fu et al, 2017 ). The behaviors involved in giving a five-star rating to the defective products were immoral actions that were similar to deceptive behaviors, and subjects should detect a perceptual conflict, as reflected by the N2 component.…”

Perspective-Taking in Blindness: An Event- Related Brain Potentials Study With the Continuous Wavelet Transform

“…This mental representation requires little effort if the existing representation integrates the incoming information, while it is effortful when there is a reorganization need for the existing representation. According to this view, the LPP amplitude is sensitive to semantic processing demonstrating enhancement in effortful conditions [19], reflecting sustained attention and stimulus encoding processes [20] in the field of empathy and enhanced attention to emotionally relevant stimuli [21]- [23]. Moreover, the LPP latency is a function of the onset and duration in the parsing processes [24], [25], i.e., it is under voluntary cognitive control [26], reflecting a reciprocal codependency between the activity in the prefrontal and occipitoparietal cortex [20].…”

Electrophysiological Correlates of Processing Warning Signs With Different Background Colors: An Event-Related Potentials Investigation

“…Moreover, P3 reflects attention allocation related to stimulus evaluation and categorical processing (Polich, 2007;Holmes et al, 2008). Categorization of stimuli along evaluative or non-evaluative dimensions has been revealed to be associated with P3 component (Cao et al, 2010;Fu et al, 2017).…”