Date

11-13-2024

Department

School of Behavioral Sciences

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD)

Chair

Tamra Rasberry

Keywords

deception, high-stakes, nonverbal, baseline, confession

Disciplines

Communication | Psychology

Abstract

Decades of low-stakes deception research, in which participants lied without risk of severe personal, professional, or legal consequences, produced few reliable deception cues. As a result, deception detection methods based on low-stakes findings generated limited accuracy. More research was needed to identify reliable deception cues performed in real world scenarios. To address the problem, this within-subjects mixed methods study coded videos of public figures’ nonverbal (NV) cues during real-world high-stakes (RWHS) baseline, deception, and confession (BDC); tested each cue for significance; and identified demeanor (descriptively and quantitatively) for each condition. The qualitative study described how each subject’s behavior changed between conditions. The quantitative study combined subject data to find significant cue performances. The mixed method study merged all findings into behavior patterns for each condition and tested them for significance. The results showed baseline produced the most-consistent behavior, deception produced the most-changed behavior, and confession produced the most-subdued behavior. Specifically, subjects performed significantly more cues per second during baseline, presented significantly more exclusive cues during deception, and missed exclusive cues more significantly during confession. Data from the BDC design produced ecologically valid descriptions of RWHS NV behaviors and demonstrated the design’s potential for showing causality in future deception cue research.

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