LYING IS THE MOST MEAN AND MOST CONTEMPTIBLE VICE
The culture of lying which has been testing all of us and our institutions
I wished to share some excerpts from a recent paper on the publics ability to detect lying from political figures. I think it’s worthwhile to understand some of the factors involved from specialists in the field. The paper describes a social experiment and does not out necessarily bring to light any surprises, but the factors involved are described. In our listening to Trump, if unfortunately we must do so, perhaps this might be helpful to remember in judging the veracity of his speaking. The figure shows the relative importance in factors to look for in spotting deceit among Trump especially, but all others as well.
Published online 2021 Aug 20.
Deception Detection in Politics: Can Voters Tell When Politicians are Lying?
Kyle Mattes, Valeriia Popova,
and Jacqueline R. Evans
Though politicians may bear certain psychological costs of breaking trust, we also know they lie strategically and attempt to avoid detection. Politicians face many situations for which lying is a potential solution. For example, a politician in a marginal seat may feel compelled to lie about anything that, if admitted, will cost the election. By some accounts, politicians’ lying is a rational response to the expectation that other candidates will engage in deceptive behavior. Furthermore, Davis and Ferrantino theorize that lying is incentivized by the lack of transferrable property rights to political office—it’s easier and faster to return a faulty used car than a faulty politician. Furthermore, Janezic and Gallego find that politicians with a greater willingness to lie have a better chance of being re-elected.
A recent study shows that politicians tend to be dishonest even when their preferences are aligned with those of their constituencies. Lying is commonplace enough for researchers to develop taxonomies of political lies; Pfiffner delineates three types of lying by presidents: justifiable lies, lies to prevent embarrassment, and lies of policy deception, each having different consequences and effects on public trust. This propensity to compromise honesty is furthermore exacerbated by the structure and size of rewards from holding public office; the more lucrative the payoff looks for a decision-maker, the more likely she or he to lie to get that payoff.
Some consider ambiguity to be a method of deception, such as when politicians have a policy preference but, for political gain, either attempt to obfuscate it or pretend they do not have a stance. Ambiguity serves well if a candidate is uncertain about the position of the median voter; being purposefully ambiguous about one’s policy positions allows a candidate more time to investigate voters’ preferences. Such ambiguity can be harmful to voters; for one, it leaves voters uncertain about which candidate is more extreme. When multiple politicians send competing messages to the same voters, they leave voters to wonder which messages are truthful and which are not. Surprisingly, ambiguity in political rhetoric does not always repel voters and even may, on the contrary, attract them. The preference for an ambiguous candidate is a function of an individuals’ risk orientation and preferences for candidates from one’s own party. While politicians are hesitant to tell complete (“black”) lies, they are strongly inclined to deliver partially true claims, or “grey lies”, such as exaggeration. Candidates may exaggerate their messages because their communication with voters exists in a noisy environment with many other actors and messages. In sum, politicians lie to voters in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons. Can voters figure out when they are lying?
When it comes to deceptive behavior and veracity judgments in politics, there is a dynamic between the sender (politician) and the receiver (voter) which is not typical for ordinary interactions between individuals. If citizens think that politicians lie frequently, they may be reluctant to believe politicians’ words easily. Voters are in a particularly difficult situation when it comes to detecting the deception of politicians, because politicians often have the opportunity to plan their lies, as opposed to making them up on the spot. Research suggests that planned lies, as one might expect, are more difficult to detect than spontaneous lies. On the other hand, politicians may be especially motivated to get away with their lies, and a sender’s motivation to be believed is associated with higher deception detection accuracy.
Deception Detection Cues
In the current study we investigated several cues that might be relied on by voters attempting to evaluate politicians’ credibility. These cues are either known to be commonly reported as indicative of deception by laypeople (“common cues”) and/or have been shown to be associated with statement veracity (“useful cues”). We classified the cues based on various aspects of the speaker’s behavior, specifically a speakers’ verbal behaviors (e.g., content of statement), paraverbal (i.e., vocal) behavior (e.g., pitch), non-verbal behavior (e.g., fidgeting), and global demeanor impressions (e.g., nervousness).
Verbal cues are generally considered to be the best cues to rely upon in the deception literature. Indeed, the most obvious cue that something is a lie is that it contradicts something that is known (or believed) to be true. Relatedly, statement plausibility is a commonly reported cue to deception, and it is also a predictor of statement veracity. As such, we examined whether participants reported relying on statement content. We also included another useful verbal cue, and perhaps the most discriminating and well-studied cue in the literature: amount of detail. Truthful statements generally are longer/more detailed that false statements.
Paraverbal cues are auditory in nature, like verbal cues, but relate to how something is said rather than what is said; one does not have to understand what is being said in order to pick up on paraverbal cues. While several of the most common cues are paraverbal in nature (e.g., hesitations), they are less reliably associated with veracity than verbal cues. In the current study we examined four paraverbal cues: hesitations, speech errors, voice pitch, and (un)certainty. The first three of those are commonly reported cues to deception. The DePaulo et al. meta-analysis did in fact that find higher voice pitch is associated with deception. Also found to be associated with deception was uncertainty. The utility of hesitations and speech errors is less clear. In the DePaulo et al. meta-analysis these were generally not useful cues, regardless of the specific measure (e.g., filled vs. unfilled pauses). However, it is worth noting that in Vrij’s review more studies had been done, and the utility of speech errors may be greater than indicated by DePaulo et al. While most of the 43 studies summarized did not find significant differences in speech errors across veracity conditions, 17 studies did find liars had more speech errors (and only 3 found that liars had fewer speech errors).
For non-verbal cues to deception, we focused on gaze/eye movement, fidgeting, and facial expressions. Eye contact/gaze aversion is the most universally reported cued to deception, although it does not actually correlate with deception. Fidgeting is also a common cue, yet it has not been linked to deception (although there are different measures of fidgeting, and some may be more useful than others; DePaulo et al.,. We also included facial expressions, given that the concept of using microexpressions to detect deceit has to some extent reached the general population thanks to popular shows like Lie to Me. Unfortunately, the empirical literature has failed to find that attending to microexpressions is particularly useful when assessing credibility.
We examined global impressions of speaker demeanor in addition to the more specific behaviors described above. There seems to be a general belief that lying is morally wrong, which should leave liars feeling guilty/ashamed, and leave them nervous about the possibility of being caught in a lie. As such, we examined guilt/shame, nervousness, and the flip side of nervousness—calmness. DePaulo et al. did in fact find that impressions that a speaker was nervous or tense were associated with deception. We also examined impressions that the speaker was thinking hard. This cue is consistent with the cognitive load approach to lie detection which posits that lying is more difficult a task than truth-telling and has support in the research literature. Vrij et al. in fact found that police officers’ impressions that a suspect was thinking hard better predicted deception than explicit deception judgments. Finally, we examined confidence, as this is broadly associated with credibility. In line with this, competence and ambivalence are cues that evaluators rely on, and ambivalence and certainty are useful cues to deception.
Deception Detection Accuracy
Were the respondents able to detect deception? After excluding data as explained above, the politician was telling the truth 48.9% of the time. Our respondents’ judgments were correct 52.4% of the time, which was better than pure chance (binomial, p = 0.003).,910 Though this supports H2 (Accuracy), it is difficult to determine whether this conclusively represents an ability to detect politicians’ lies. Instead, it could reflect a trace amount of respondents’ prior knowledge that we were unable to eliminate by controlling for their recognition.
In search of a truth bias, we instead find some nuance, in that female politicians are more likely than male politicians to be perceived as telling the truth. Both male and female respondents are more likely to believe the women. Our results comport with previous literature suggesting that female politicians are perceived as more trustworthy than their male counterparts. Considering that implicit sexism—where women are thought unsuited for political offices because they are too soft, irrational, and incompetent—is all too common among voters, this gender-based truth bias creates a slight advantage for women, though it is by no means enough to level the playing field.
Perhaps there will eventually be better options. A fairly recent wave of research, which focuses on maximizing the differences between liars’ and truth-tellers’ behaviors, may indeed be the best way to improve deception detection. This research is based in the cognitive approach to lie detection (which can be contrasted with the more emotional approach, that assumes liars feel anxious and guilty, alluded to earlier). The cognitive approach starts with the fact that lying is more cognitively difficult than telling the truth. While truth-tellers simply have to reflect on their own experiences, memories, and beliefs and report them as they are, liars must attempt to inhibit the truth, create a lie (or remember a prepared lie), keep track of what they said to who and keep their story consistent, engage in impression management, and monitor others’ reactions to their statement. Various methods for taking advantage of the differential cognitive load faced by liars and truth-tellers have been proposed and tested with a fair bit of success. However, these interventions (e.g., providing a model statement that demonstrates the level of detail that should ideally be provided; requesting a story in reverse chronological order; asking unanticipated questions) require direct access to the target at the time that they provide their statement. As such, there are few contexts in which politicians may be subjected to them. Perhaps it is possible to organize political debates such that politicians are more accountable, but even then, it would only help citizens when elections are imminent. Predominately, citizens are left to rely on their intuitive lie detection when evaluating the trustworthiness of politicians’ statements, and as we have shown, they are not particularly good at doing so, even when they are not blinded by partisanship.
Is the above some kind super kryptonite of which to detect political deceit. Probably not most likely, but a general idea of the signs of lying are interesting if nothing else. Hopefully Trump will soon be only a bad memory and the rate of lying might be reduced to that of normal politicians. Donald Trump lies so effortlessly that I believe many of the factors listed above can not be detected. But his road looks to be rather rocky at this time. So possibly we can return to pre-Trump deceit with luck. We can only hope.
164th Posting, February 6, 2024.