This is so interesting! I have my social psychology students watch Pamela Meyer’s TED talk ‘How to Spot a Liar’ and she uses Diane Downs as an example of ‘Duping Delight’ so I actually recognized her photo. What would you suggest for future research based on your findings and/or what are your next steps?
Thanks. It makes sense to next present only one case at a time, and to use MANY more cases. There is a comparison among cases that we think participants do when deciding who is lying – and they assume someone must be lying in a study like this, so one at a time would be better.
Generally, the participants commented on whether the interviewee seemed appropriately upset about the incident. If the person cried or seemed distraught at thinking about the death of their loved one, people thought they were telling the truth. If they seemed too calm, or at all flip, then they were assumed to be lying. Interviewees who had done many interviews, and “had it down” were suspect to the participants.
There are different cues that people use to assess whether someone was lying and some of them are cues used around the global (e.g., thinking averting gaze is an indicator of lying). Do you think any of these factors played a role in your results or are these factors that you took into account when designing your study?
It is possible that participants focused on such things as eye gaze, but we were unable to track that. We did not control for that in the videos we used. Given the types of cases we had (murdered husbands and boyfriends …), it appeared that participants were focused on the details of the events, and the person’s gestures, facial expressions, verbal hesitations, and emotions. In their open ended responses, no one referred to other cues they had used. Thanks for your comment.
This is so interesting! I have my social psychology students watch Pamela Meyer’s TED talk ‘How to Spot a Liar’ and she uses Diane Downs as an example of ‘Duping Delight’ so I actually recognized her photo. What would you suggest for future research based on your findings and/or what are your next steps?
Thanks. It makes sense to next present only one case at a time, and to use MANY more cases. There is a comparison among cases that we think participants do when deciding who is lying – and they assume someone must be lying in a study like this, so one at a time would be better.
Interesting! Wondering about the details of the emotion expressed…and how those might differ in judgment type.
Generally, the participants commented on whether the interviewee seemed appropriately upset about the incident. If the person cried or seemed distraught at thinking about the death of their loved one, people thought they were telling the truth. If they seemed too calm, or at all flip, then they were assumed to be lying. Interviewees who had done many interviews, and “had it down” were suspect to the participants.
There are different cues that people use to assess whether someone was lying and some of them are cues used around the global (e.g., thinking averting gaze is an indicator of lying). Do you think any of these factors played a role in your results or are these factors that you took into account when designing your study?
It is possible that participants focused on such things as eye gaze, but we were unable to track that. We did not control for that in the videos we used. Given the types of cases we had (murdered husbands and boyfriends …), it appeared that participants were focused on the details of the events, and the person’s gestures, facial expressions, verbal hesitations, and emotions. In their open ended responses, no one referred to other cues they had used. Thanks for your comment.