Detection of Truthful and Deceptive Interpersonal Communications across Information Transmission Modes

Summary This study investigated the utility of various types of information for detection of truthful and deceitful communications. Videotaped segments from interviews were edited to produce five stimulus tapes that presented all available information or deleted various combinations of facial, paralinguistic, and verbal content cues. Ss were 109 male and female college students; each viewed one of the edited videotapes and judged whether taped responses were truths or lies. Results indicated that facial cues were not useful to Ss, but verbal content and paralinguistic cues were useful. Paralinguistic cues were more useful for the recognition of true statements; verbal content, for detection of lies.