Body Movement and Voice Pitch in Deceptive Interaction

Audiovisually recorded 16 student nurses during 2 interviews, in one of which they attempted to deceive as to the nature of a film previously viewed. Voice pitch and the following hand movements were measured: "illustrators" (illustrative gestures), "shrugs" (rotations of the hand, conveying uncertainty), and "adaptors" (contact of the hand with another body part). During deception, illustrators decreased while voice pitch increased. Observers saw complete audiotapes of the face only or the body only, or heard the audiotapes with speech intelligibility filtered out, and rated each sample on 14 bipolar scales. "Face-only" observers made more positive ratings of deceptive samples (e.g., more sincere, sociable, relaxed) while the reverse occurred for "body-only" observers. Rating scores on sociability and dominance only were correlated across all 4 information sources. Comparing behavior measurements with observer ratings showed that illustrators correlated with sociability, but shrugs and short adaptors did not correlate with ratings. It is concluded that observers' judgments are based on hand movements and pitch, which are intercorrelated and which change between honest and deceptive interaction. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)