Premium
No evidence that instructions to ignore nonverbal cues improve deception detection accuracy
Author(s) -
Bogaard Glynis,
Meijer Ewout H.
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/acp.3950
Subject(s) - nonverbal communication , deception , psychology , focus (optics) , lie detection , regulatory focus theory , cognitive psychology , social psychology , communication , physics , creativity , optics
Research has consistently shown people predominantly rely on undiagnostic nonverbal cues when detecting deceit, whereas verbal cues are more accurate. In three experiments, we investigated whether the simple instruction not to focus on nonverbal cues would make people focus more on diagnostic verbal cues and hence more accurate in detecting lies. Participants judged the veracity of true and deceptive statements and either received (1) no instruction, (2) the instruction to ignore nonverbal cues, or (3) to ignore nonverbal cues and focus on verbal cues instead. In the second and third experiments, condition 3 was changed to an audio condition in which visual cues were inaccessible. Results showed no effect of instruction on lie detection performance. Overall, we found no evidence that the simple instruction not to focus on nonverbal cues while judging veracity is an effective strategy to make people focus more on verbal cues or to improve lie detection.