2.4 Deception and Nonverbal Communication Competence

As we learned earlier, nonverbal communication can convey meaning by contradicting verbal communication and people often perceive nonverbal communication to be more credible than verbal communication. This is especially true when we receive mixed messages that may indicate deception or lying.

2.4.1 Concept and Misinterpretation of Deception

Deception is typically thought of as the intentional act of altering information for certain communicative purposes, which means that it extends beyond lying to include concealing, omitting, or exaggerating information.

Deception obviously has negative connotations, however, it should be reckoned more as a strategy we employ to influence others' behavior or perception than simply as a moral weakness. People may engage in deception for many reasons, including being polite to others such as the case of “white lie” or to influence others' behaviors or perceptions to achieve greater good and deception is far more widespread than you think. The fact that deception served an evolutionary purpose helps explain its prevalence among humans today. Species that are capable of deception have a higher survival rate because nonverbal deception can help them to attract mates, hide from predators, and trap prey. However, it is important to note that despite lying played a part in our survival as a species, it does not give anybody a free pass for deception.

2.4.2 Deception Detecting Abilities and Bias

Verbal communication may be most blamed for the content of the deception, while well-played nonverbal communication that collaborates with the words helps to make deceptive acts more convincing. Since most of us intuitively believe that nonverbal communication is more credible, we often tend to make an effort to control our nonverbal communication when we are lying. Likewise, we often try to evaluate other people's nonverbal communication to determine the authenticity of their messages. What is interesting is that researchers find that most people can only detect deception a little bit better than simple guesses while people generally perceive themselves as good detectors of deception. Considering the fact that deception is more common than you believe, it may be fair to say that most people have the experience of working with false information without even being aware of it.

One of the forces that make it more difficult for people to use their lie detecting abilities is the “truth bias, ” which means that if we know and like a certain person such as a family member or close friend, we are more inclined to believe that he or she is telling the truth. Conversely, people in occupations like law enforcement may have interpersonal trust issues that could easily generate a lie bias to assume everyone is lying. Another important bias is the physical attractiveness bias, which leads people to equate attractiveness with goodness mistakenly sometimes. Research shows that men are more drawn to women's physical attractiveness while a man's social status and wealth has been shown to be more important than his physical attractiveness is to women.

2.4.3 Misconception of Nonverbal Leakage

As the old saying goes, one should not judge a book by its cover. Here are a few guidelines to help you avoid the trap of deception and deception detecting.

The first thing to keep in mind is that there is not a set profile of deceptive behaviors that you can use to create your own non-verbally-based lie detector. There is no single sign that could indicate deception for sure because many of the nonverbal behaviors that people generally associate with deception do not actually stem from the act of deception but the attempts to control the cognitive and physical changes that happen during states of cognitive and physical arousal such as anxiety, thrill, or fear of disbelief. These signs are often referred to as nonverbal leakage. Some of these reactions are visible, such as increased body movements, and some are audible, such as changes in voice pitch, volume, or rate. Other reactions, such as changes in the electrical conductivity of the skin, increased breathing, and increased heart rate, are not always detectable.

Research states that when people are falsely accused of deception, the signs that they exhibit because of the stress of being falsely accused are very similar to the signals exhibited by people who are actually engaging in deception. Behaviors that are commonly mistaken to be linked with deception include longer response times, slower speech rates, decreased eye contact, increased body movements, excessive swallowing, and less smiling. None of these has consistently been associated with deception. Polygraph machines, or lie detectors work on the principle that the presence of signs of arousal is a reliable indicator of deception in situations where other factors that would also evoke such signals are absent. It is impossible to interpret nonverbal leakage for deception without considering it under specific context and building up a baseline of the person's communication history and emotional and psychological state first.

2.4.4 Typical Giveaway Signs of Deception

The following are some nonverbal signals that have been associated with deception in research studies, but be cautious about viewing these as absolute rules for lying detecting without considering individual and contextual differences.

1) Gestures

One of the most powerful associations between nonverbal behaviors and deception is the presence of adapters. Self-touching behaviors like wringing hands, or rubbing the nose and object-adapters like playing with a pencil, pulling at the collar or messing with clothing have been shown to correlate to deception.

2) Eye contact

The connection between eye contact and deception is not fixed. Deceivers tend to use more eye contact when lying to friends, perhaps to try to increase feelings of immediacy or warmth, in contrast less eye contact when lying to strangers. If someone is avoiding eye contact, do not immediately assume that this person is not listening or is hiding something, especially when you are conveying complex or surprising information. Since looking away also signals cognitive activity, this person may be processing information, and you may need to pause and ask if he or she needs a second to think or if he or she needs you repeat or explain anything more. As for increased eye blinking, researchers found that it is the result of quite a few heightened arousal and cognitive activity therefore cannot be used as clues for deception alone.

3) Facial expressions

Since facial expressions are often subconscious, they may be an indicator of inconsistency within a speaker's message. People can intentionally use facial expressions to deceive in five primary ways. People may show feelings that they do not actually have, show a higher intensity of feelings than they actually have, try to show no feelings, try to show less feelings than they actually have, or mask one feeling with another.

• It is not fear when there is absence of the reliable forehead expression.

• It is not sadness when there is absence of the reliable forehead expression.

• It is not happiness when lacking of wrinkles around the eye (eye muscles not being involved).

• It is not negative emotions when there is absence of sympathetic somatic response.

• It is not any emotion when there is asymmetrical expression, onset of expression incongruent or abrupt.

4) Vocalics

One of the most common nonverbal signs of deception is speech errors. As you might recall, verbal fillers and other speech disfluencies are studied as part of vocalics; examples include false starts, stutters, and an increase in verbal fillers. Studies also show that an increase in verbal pitch is associated with deception and is likely caused by heightened arousal and tension.

As we have learned, people tend to give more weight to nonverbal than verbal cues when evaluating the truthfulness of a person or her or his message. This kind of predisposition can lead us to focus on nonverbal cues while overlooking verbal signals of deception. In fact, a study found that people were better able to detect deception by sound alone than they were when exposed to both auditory and visual cues. Therefore, another advice for deception detecting is to dig deep into the concealed information by asking follow-up questions or considering contextual clues to increase your understanding. Listen for inconsistencies in or contradictions between statements before deciding whether others are being deceptive is the smart thing to do instead of relying on nonverbal cues alone.

Group Work

Read the following text of a student's reply to his professor's demand for an explanation of his failure to cite sources for several passages in his paper that came from various websites. Then try to discuss with your partner:

The student scratches his head and says: “What do you mean? Those were my ideas. I did look at several websites, but I did not directly quote anything so I did not think I needed to put the citations in parentheses.” As he says this, he rubs the back of his neck and then scratches his face and makes minimal eye contact with the professor.

It is important to realize that there are more misunderstandings around the subject of deception and deception detection than commonly believed. Deception is not necessarily always malevolent, mean, or hurtful. In addition, there is no single gesture, facial expression, or muscle twitch that can indicate deception alone. Deceptive nonverbal behaviors actually result from the nonverbal leakage due to cognitive and physiological changes rather than the deception act itself. There are some typical giveaways for deception in terms of eye contact, facial expressions, vocalics, etc. Knowing these possible deceptive signs is helpful, but not foolproof, because they are just general patterns that behavior social psychologists have detected by observing people in various situations. It is vital to be aware of potential discrepancies between verbal and nonverbal communication and look for multiple nonverbal cues to interpret certain actions. Avoid putting too much weight on any one cue or nonverbal signs alone while watching out for possible inclination towards any bias.

Exercises

1. Choose the best answer from the following choices.

1) Deception is typically thought of as the intentional act of ______information for certain communicative purposes.

A. concealing

B. altering

C. omitting

D. exaggerating

2) In which of the following cases would the truth bias less likely to come into effect?

A. Between family members.

B. Between close friends.

C. Between lovers.

D. Between students and teachers.

3) In which of the following cases is nonverbal leakage less likely to happen?

A. When experiencing anger.

B. When experiencing fear.

C. When experiencing happiness.

D. When experiencing thrill.

4) Which of the following is NOT related to behaviors that are mistakenly linked with deception by common people?

A. Longer response times.

B. Slower speech rates.

C. Decreased eye contact.

D. Decreased body movements.

5) Which of the following statements CANNOT indicate inconsistency within a speaker's message?

A. It is not sadness when there is absence of the reliable forehead expression.

B. It is not happiness when there is a lack of wrinkles around the eye (eye muscles not being involved).

C. It is not any negative emotion when there is presence of sympathetic somatic response.

D. It is not any emotion when there is asymmetrical expression, onset of expression incongruent or abrupt.

2. Tell whether the following statements are true or false.

1) People usually try to use verbal communication to evaluate the authenticity of their messages when verbal messages conflict with nonverbal messages.

2) Deception served an evolutionary purpose as species that are capable of deception have a higher survival rate and as nonverbal deception can help them to attract mates, hide from predators, and trap prey.

3) Men and Women both consider physical attractiveness more important than a person's social status and wealth.

4) One of the most powerful associations between nonverbal behaviors and deception is the presence of adapters.

5) Deceivers will definitely use more eye contact when lying to friends.

3. Finish the following tasks with your own understanding.

1) Make a survey among your classmates to see if you can find other kinds of bias that can influence a person's deception detecting ability other than appearance and truth bias.

2)Watch the intro part of the American TV series Lie to Me.Try to find out some typical giveaways of deception in the video clip.