Attentional Determinants of Success at Detecting Deception and Truth

Abstract

Subjects, 22 males and 22 females, observed a videotape of 6 males and 6females who were sometimes lying and sometimes telling the truth. Subjects were instructed to pay special attention to the tone of voice, the words, or the visual cues of the senders, or were given no special attentional instructions (control condition). Subjects told to pay particular attention to the tone of voice were significantly more successful at distinguishing truth from deception than subjects in the control condition. Further analyses showed that the instructions to subjects to attend to tone significantly increased the degree to which they rated the truthful messages as truthful, but it did not increase the degree to which the;' rated the deceptive messages as deceptive. It was suggested that tone of voice cues may be particularly informative to perceivers making judgments of truthfulness, and that perceivers do not always take full advantage of the cues that are available to them.