Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Vrij, Mann and Bull
- The aim of the study was to
study truth telling behaviour or
deceptive behaviour in high
stake liars.
- It is generally believed
that liars fidget more and
avoid eye contact when in
reality most people move
less and become quite still.
There is also no
relationship between eye
contact and lying.
- There have been issues with previous
studies (most of which were laboratory
experiments). Most of the studies
lacked ecological validity as subjects
were aware of the purpose of the
study and were aware of being
observed and or videotaped. Since in
most cases subjects had been asked to
lie they also felt less less guilty. One of
main problems with the past studies
was that there were minimal
consequences as trivial questions such
as personal opinions etc were
investigated
- It was due to these points that a study
was devised to examine the behaviour
of liars in high-stake situations.
- Vrij and Mann in the study
examined videotapes
containing the truthful and
deceptive behaviour of 16
suspects in their police
interviews. The stakes were
high and for 4 of the 16,
getting caught meant a life
sentence in prison.
- 16 subjects (13 male, 3
female). 4 were juveniles
(three 13 year olds and a 15
year old). 15 Caucasian and 1
Punjabi. 9 Arrested for theft,
4 for murder, 2 for Arson
and 1 for attempted rape
- Two coders used in
the study. One
viewed all 65 clips (27
truths, 38 lies), other
viewed only 36. Hence
some form of
inter-rater reliabilty
- Minimum 2 clips
(1 lie, 1 truth) and
maximum 8 clips
(3 truths, 5 lies)
per participant
- Length
of clips
between
5 and
145
seconds.
- They looked for
eight categories:
Gaze aversion,
head movements,
blinking, pauses,
speech
disturbances,
illustrators, self
manipulation and
hand movements
- Results:
- 81% of the
participants
pause longer
when lying.
(5.31 vs 3.73)
- Blinking
decreased by
81% when
participants
were lying.
(18.50 vs
23.56)
- Behaviour
however was not
same for all
participants and
there was no
typical lying
behaviour. For
example, 56%
showed more
gaze aversion and
44% less. Similarly
50% showed more
head movements
and 50% less.
- Problems with the study
include:
- Different interviewers used for different videos.
They did not compare high-stake lying behaviour
with high-stake truth telling behaviour. The Sample
size is also limited. Facial expressions such as
microexpressions as brought up by Ekman could
not be studied due to insufficient quality of
videotapes.
- People may
not always
show nervous
behaviour due
to increased
cognitive load.
- Increase in cognitive load
results in: Neglect of body
language, reduced overall
animation, increased speech
disturbances and longer
pauses, increased cognitive
load also results in eyeblink
suppression
- Liars often
attempt to
control their
behaviour in
order to give
a credible
impression.
This is called
motivational
impairment
effect.