The path of dishonesty: identification of mental processes with electrical neuroimaging

Abstract

Much research finds that lying takes longer than truth-telling. Yet, the source of this response time difference remains elusive. Here, we assessed the spatiotemporal evolution of electrical brain activity during honesty and dishonesty in 150 participants using a sophisticated electrical neuroimaging approach—the microstate approach. This uniquely positioned us to identify and contrast the entire chain of mental processes involved during honesty and dishonesty. Specifically, we find that the response time difference is the result of an additional late-occurring mental process, unique to dishonest decisions, interrupting the antecedent mental processing. We suggest that this process inhibits the activation of the truth, thus permitting the execution of the lie. These results advance our understanding of dishonesty and clarify existing theories about the role of increased cognitive load. More broadly, we demonstrate the vast potential of our approach to illuminate the temporal organization of mental processes involved in decision-making.

EEG Microstates in Social and Affective Neuroscience

“…Microstate analysis of ERPs enables the researcher to identify, time, and sequence neurophysiological processes across distinct experimental conditions or trial types, such as anxiety vs. no-anxiety (Nash et al 2023 ), conditioned fear vs. safety stimuli (Pizzagalli et al 2003 ; Mueller and Pizzagalli 2016 ), direct vs. averted gaze (Burra et al 2016 ), honest vs. dishonest decisions (Globig et al 2023 ), ingroup- vs. outgroup-related information (Walker et al 2008 ; Schiller et al 2020a ), less vs. more attractive faces (Han et al 2020 , 2022 ), self- vs. other-voice processing (Iannotti et al 2022 ), social vs. non-social stimuli/contexts (Thierry et al 2006 ; Ortigue et al 2009 , 2010 ; Cacioppo et al 2012 , 2015 , 2016 , 2018 ; Koban et al 2012 ; Decety and Cacioppo 2012 ; Pegna et al 2015 ), stereotype-congruent vs. stereotype-incongruent information (Schiller et al 2016 ), stress vs. no stress (Schiller et al 2023a ) and neutral vs. emotional stimuli (Pizzagalli et al 2000 ; Gianotti et al 2007 , 2008 ; Cacioppo et al 2016 ; Tanaka et al 2021 ; Zerna et al 2021 ; Liang et al 2022 ; Prete et al 2022 ) (Fig. 3 ).…”

“…Response time differences in socio-affective behaviors, however, can also be due to qualitative processing differences . For example, Globig et al ( 2023 ) analyzed ERPs during honest and dishonest social decision-making. Behaviorally, participants needed more time to lie than to tell the truth about the outcome of an incentivized card game.…”

Changing the incentive structure of social media platforms to halt the spread of misinformation

“…Code and anonymized data are available at: https://github.com/affective-brain-lab/Changing-the-Incentive-Structure-of-Social-Media-Platforms (copy archived at Globig, 2023 ).…”