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Truth or lie: Exploring the language of deception.

ABSTRACT: Lying appears in everyday oral and written communication. As a consequence, detecting it on the basis of linguistic analysis is particularly important. Our study aimed to verify whether the differences between true and false statements in terms of complexity and sentiment that were reported in previous studies can be confirmed using tools dedicated to measuring those factors. Further, we investigated whether linguistic features that differentiate true and false utterances in English-namely utterance length, concreteness, and particular parts-of-speech-are also present in the Polish language. We analyzed nearly 1,500 true and false statements, half of which were transcripts while the other half were written statements. Our results show that false statements are less complex in terms of vocabulary, are more concise and concrete, and have more positive words and fewer negative words. We found no significant differences between spoken and written lies. Using this data, we built classifiers to automatically distinguish true from false utterances, achieving an accuracy of 60%. Our results provide a significant contribution to previous conclusions regarding linguistic deception indicators.

SUBMITTER: Sarzynska-Wawer J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9894434 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Truth or lie: Exploring the language of deception.

Sarzynska-Wawer Justyna J Pawlak Aleksandra A Szymanowska Julia J Hanusz Krzysztof K Wawer Aleksander A

PloS one 20230202 2

Lying appears in everyday oral and written communication. As a consequence, detecting it on the basis of linguistic analysis is particularly important. Our study aimed to verify whether the differences between true and false statements in terms of complexity and sentiment that were reported in previous studies can be confirmed using tools dedicated to measuring those factors. Further, we investigated whether linguistic features that differentiate true and false utterances in English-namely utter ...[more]

PMID: 36730363

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Project description:Lying is typically more cognitively demanding than truth telling. Yet, recent cognitive models of lying propose that lying can be just as easy as truth telling, depending on contextual factors. In line with this idea, research has shown that the cognitive cost of deception decreases when people frequently respond deceptively, while it increases when people rarely respond deceptively (i.e., the truth proportion effect). In the present study, we investigated two possible underlying mechanisms of the truth proportion effect. In Experiment 1 (N = 121), we controlled for the impact of switch costs by keeping the number of switches between deceptive and truthful responses constant. We found that people who often responded deceptively made fewer errors when responding deceptively than people who only occasionally responded deceptively, replicating the truth proportion effect. Thus, while the truth proportion effect in earlier studies may be partially driven by the cost of switching between truthful and deceptive responses, we still found evidence for the truth proportion effect while controlling for switch costs. In Experiment 2 (N = 68), we assessed whether the truth proportion effect is influenced by goal neglect. According to this view, the truth proportion effect should be reduced if participants are cued to maintain the task goals, while it should be larger when participants are allowed to neglect the task goals. In line with this hypothesis, we found a smaller truth proportion effect when participants were cued with the task goals compared to when they were not cued. This study shows that the truth proportion effect is influenced by goal neglect, implying that frequent deceptive responding strengthens the goal of responding deceptively. Our findings imply that the accuracy of lie detection tests could be increased by using a majority of truth-items (i.e., induce the truth proportion effect), and that the truth proportion effect should be maximized by (1) increasing the number of truth-lie task switches and (2) inducing goal neglect.

Dataset Information

Truth or lie: Exploring the language of deception.

Publications

Truth or lie: Exploring the language of deception.

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