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2000 26: 118Pers Soc Psychol BullJames A. Forrest and Robert S. Feldman

Detecting Deception and Judge's Involvement: Lower Task Involvement Leads to Better Lie Detection  

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PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETINForrest, Feldman / DETECTING DECEPTION

Detecting Deception and Judge’sInvolvement: Lower TaskInvolvement Leads to Better Lie Detection

James A. ForrestRobert S. FeldmanUniversity of Massachusetts at Amherst

Videotaped samples of target individuals making honest or dis-honest statements were shown to 66 male and female partici-pants who judged each sample in terms of honesty. The partici-pants were either highly involved in the judging task or relativelyuninvolved. It was assumed that highly involved participantswould engage in central route processing and therefore attendmore to the verbal message, whereas less-involved participantswould engage in peripheral route processing and thereforeattend more to the nonverbal behavior of the targets. Becausenonverbal cues are most indicative of deception, it was hypothe-sized—and found—that low-involvement participants wouldbe more accurate at detecting deception than would high-involvement participants. Furthermore, gender differences andsupport for a motivational impairment effect were found, inwhich lies told by people who were highly motivated to lie success-fully were more easily detected.

A significant body of research has examined thedegree to which people are able to identify deceptivemessages emanating from a target person (DePaulo,1994; Feldman & Rimé, 1991). For instance, Kraut(1980) found that people are able to differentiate cor-rectly between honest and dishonest statements about60% of the time, not terribly impressive in light ofchance being 50%. Other research finds that althoughmembers of particular groups, such as U.S. Secret Serviceagents, show relatively greater success at detectingdeception (Ekman & O’Sullivan, 1991), the accuracy ofmost groups at distinguishing between people being hon-est and dishonest is not much better than chance levels.

Much of the research examining the ability to detectdeception has focused on demographic and personalityfactors, with limited success. For example, Keating andHeltman (1994) hypothesized that being a good deceiver

might be one way in which highly dominant peopleachieve social power, but they found no relationshipbetween dominance and the ability to detect deception.DePaulo and Tang (1994) found that socially anxiouspeople are worse at detecting deception than arenon–socially anxious individuals. Gender differencesalso have been investigated, and women have beenfound to be better than men at detecting people’s actualaffective state (Ekman, 1985) and better at decodingnonverbal behaviors (Zuckerman, Lipets, Koivumaki, &Rosenthal, 1975). Although a greater ability to decodenonverbal behaviors could translate into greater abilityto detect deception, a meta-analysis of the literaturefound no significant differences between men andwomen in detecting deception (DePaulo, Epstein, &Wyer, 1993).

Other studies suggest that the most accurate judges indetecting deception are those who pay attention to thenonverbal behaviors of communicators because nonver-bal behaviors are more predictive of deception than areother types of behavior (DePaulo, Stone, & Lassiter,1985a; Ekman & O’Sullivan, 1991; Zuckerman, DePaulo, &Rosenthal, 1981; Zuckerman & Driver, 1985). Specifi-cally, DePaulo et al. (1985a) showed, through meta-analyses of deception studies, that various cues are relia-bly associated with deception. For example, speech

Authors’ Note: This material is based on work supported under a Na-tional Science Foundation Graduate Student Fellowship and the Uni-versity of Massachusetts Office of Minority Graduate StudentRecruitment to the first author. Correspondence concerning this arti-cle should be addressed to James A. Forrest or Robert S. Feldman at theDepartment of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA01003; e-mail: jforrest@medusa.sbs.umass.edu or feldman@psych.umass.edu.

PSPB, Vol. 26 No. 1, January 2000 118-125© 2000 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

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hesitation, pitch, and speech errors are cues that predictdeception.

Despite the existence of a large body of research onnonverbal cues and deception, relatively little researchhas focused on theoretical explanations for theprocesses that underlie the ability to successfully detectdeception. Consequently, it is useful to turn to broaderdomains of interpersonal communication to develop abetter theoretical understanding of deception. Specifi-cally, the literature on persuasion, which involves con-vincing a target to accept a message, seems relevant tosituations in which communicators are attempting toconvince a target that their message is true.

One theoretical approach from the persuasion litera-ture that is particularly relevant to the deception litera-ture is the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) of Pettyand Cacioppo (1981, 1986). This model suggests thatpeople who are highly involved in a judgment task willuse what Petty and Cacioppo refer to as central informa-tion processing. While using central processing, peoplerely on a rational process in which they attend to the con-tent of what is being said, seek to understand it, andmake an evaluation of the message. Petty and Cacioppo(1986) also suggest that there is a second processingroute that people might use when encountering a per-suasive message: peripheral information processing. Inperipheral processing, people pay attention to periph-eral cues, which are factors—such as a speaker’s nonver-bal behavior or demeanor—that are not related to thecentral arguments of the message.

In a study that provides some evidence for associatingperipheral processing with nonverbal cues and centralprocessing with verbal cues, Stiff et al. (1989) found thatpeople engaging in systematic processing only pay atten-tion to verbal cues when judging deception, whereaspeople using peripheral processing pay attention toboth visual and (to some extent) verbal cues. Given thatthe cues that are most predictive of deception are non-verbal cues, which may be unrelated to the central meritsof a persuasive appeal, the ELM leads to an interestingpossibility: Increases in personal involvement, whichlead to central route processing, might lead to worseidentification of deception. In contrast, lower degrees ofinvolvement, in which processing follows the peripheralroute, might lead to better identification of deception.

In sum, by combining the ELM framework and theresearch on cues to deception, several hypotheses can besuggested concerning motivation to scrutinize and itseffect on the accuracy of detecting deception: (a) whenusing the central route, people attend to what a targetperson is saying and then make an assessment about theveracity of that message and (b) when using the periph-eral route, people attend more to peripheral cues, whichinclude the nonverbal cues associated with deception.

Consequently, when judging a message for sincerity, it isreasonable to assume that people who use differentroutes for message processing will attribute deception indifferent ways. Specifically, people using the centralroute will presumably attend more to the verbal compo-nents of a message, which are relatively poor indicatorsof deception (DePaulo et al., 1985a). In contrast, peopleengaged in peripheral route processing might attendless to the relatively uninformative verbal aspects of amessage and more to its nonverbal aspects and conse-quently be better detectors of deception. In short, highmotivation to scrutinize a message may actually lead toless success at detection than low motivation to scruti-nize a message.

In this study, we manipulated the motivation of decep-tion detectors to vary central and peripheral processing.It was expected that judges who were highly motivated toscrutinize a message would engage in central processingand consequently would be less likely to use the moreinformative nonverbal cues to deception, focusinginstead on the verbal message. In contrast, less-motivated judges were expected to engage in peripheralprocessing and consequently would be more likely to usenonverbal cues. In short, it was predicted that the lessmotivated lie detectors were, the more accurate theywould be in distinguishing honest from dishoneststatements.

Several other aspects of lie detection also were investi-gated in this study. Previous research suggests that peo-ple who are highly motivated to deceive (because decep-tive ability is viewed as either a mark of competence orseems highly relevant for some other reason) are less suc-cessful at deceiving than are people who are less moti-vated (DePaulo & Kirkendol, 1988; DePaulo, Kirkendol,Tang, & O’Brien, 1988). Furthermore, although meta-analyses show no difference between men and women intheir ability to detect deception (DePaulo et al., 1993),DePaulo, Stone, and Lassiter (1985b) suggest that insome situations, female targets might be more motivatedto appear sincere than males and thus tell lies that aremore discernible.

To summarize, this study manipulates judges’ involve-ment in the task to investigate the underlying processesrelated to detecting deception. Target motivation, targetsex, and judge sex also were investigated as possible fac-tors in determining accuracy at detecting deception.Assuming that highly involved people primarily attendto the verbal aspects of a deceptive message and thatless-involved people primarily attend to the nonverbalaspects of a deceptive message, we hypothesized thatjudges in the high-involvement condition would be lesssuccessful at differentiating between honest and dishon-est statements than would judges in the low-involvementcondition.

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METHOD

Overview

In the first part of the study, the procedure used byDePaulo et al. (1988) was replicated to create videotapesof people being deceptive or honest. Undergraduateparticipants (targets) were asked to present certain atti-tudes to their partners, who supposedly were behind aone-way mirror. The target person’s motivation wasmanipulated by instructions that described the ability tomake favorable impressions as related (high motivation)or not related (low motivation) to achievement in sociallife, professions, and school. The targets were given fourissues to talk about and were instructed to give proattitu-dinal arguments for two of those issues (honest condi-tion) and counterattitudinal arguments for the othertwo issues (dishonest condition).

In the second part of the study, judges watched video-tape samples of the messages provided by the targets andjudged each message in terms of the target’s perceivedsincerity. Judge involvement was manipulated by amethod similar to that used by Chaiken (1980), who toldjudges that after the tape was viewed, questions would beasked about the messages on the tape (high involve-ment) or about different messages that were not on thetape (low involvement). Judges rated each message interms of the perceived sincerity of the target person.

Targets

Twenty-four University of Massachusetts at Amherstintroductory psychology students (12 men, 12 women)received experimental credits for their participation.Two individuals who did not consent to the use of theirtaped interviews were excluded, as were six individualswho did not follow instructions. Furthermore, becauseZebrowitz, Voinescu, and Collins (1996) found a rela-tionship between attractiveness and perceived honesty,the 16 remaining targets (8 mean, 8 women) were ratedfor attractiveness. Twenty graduate and undergraduatestudents rated each target person on a 7-point scaleanchored at very attractive and very unattractive to screenout individuals who differed significantly from thenorm. No target person was rated above or below 2 stan-dard deviations from the mean, so all of them wereemployed.

Encoding Procedure

Targets were run one at a time and were told, “Thestudy consisted of people’s ability to make impressionson others in different situations.” First, the target personwas told that the other participant had not arrived yetbut in the meantime he or she could fill out a question-naire. While waiting for the other participant (who wasfictitious), the target person was asked if he or she

agreed or disagreed with each of the four attitude state-ments. The statements were as follows: (a) The deathpenalty should be instituted in all states; (b) There is toomuch violence on television; (c) Nuclear power plantsare not very safe; and (d) The government should putfurther restrictions on immigration. These four attitudestatements were selected from a larger pool of state-ments on the basis of the following criteria: (a) the meanattitude rating for each item was close to the midpoint,(b) the items were not intercorrelated, and (c) most peo-ple did not regard the issue described in the items as“very important” or “very unimportant.”

After 2 minutes, the experimenter collected the ques-tionnaire and handed out a set of instructions. The tar-get person read the instructions, which explained thatthe aim of the study was to examine the ability to makeimpressions on others in difficult circumstances. Thetarget person’s motivation to make a good impressionwas manipulated by varying the characterization of theability to make impressions. In a high-motivation condi-tion, targets were told that the ability represented “anextremely important skill . . . [which] predicts very wellsuccess in professions such as business, counseling, andhealth . . . the ability to make and maintain friends . . . andintelligen[ce] in a way that is not measured by the con-ventional IQ tests.” In a low-motivation condition, tar-gets were told that “the present study is not concernedwith determining who is and is not skilled at impression-management but instead focuses on the process bywhich impressions are created.” The experimenter wasblind to this manipulation.

While the target person read the instructions, theexperimenter prepared four envelopes, labeled 1through 4, each of which contained instructions for oneof the issues. Each instruction form indicated the tar-get’s own position, the partner’s alleged position, andthe position that the target should convey on the video-tape. The partner’s position was manipulated to be thesame as the target’s position on half of the statementsand opposite to the target’s position on the other half. Inaddition, each target was asked to convey his or her trueposition on two of the issues and a false position on theother two issues. Consequently, each target conveyedtwo honest messages and two dishonest messages. Theorder of the issues, and the order of the type of message(honest/dishonest), was randomly assigned to each tar-get person.

When the experimenter returned, each target personwas told that during the session, he or she would have toopen one envelope, read the instructions, think aboutwhat to say, and present a position on each of the attitudestatements. This procedure was followed until all theenvelopes were opened and all four attitude statementswere addressed. After each target person was finished

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with all four attitude messages, he or she was debriefedand consent was obtained to use the videotapes forfuture research.

Preparation of Stimulus Materials

The videotapes from the first part of the study, con-taining the honest and deceptive messages, were editedonto a master tape. That tape was approximately 26 min-utes long and consisted of 64 clips, each lasting approxi-mately 15 seconds with a 10-second delay between eachclip. Each of the eight male and eight female targetsappeared four times on the tape, being honest half thetime and dishonest the rest of the time. Also, half of thetargets on the tape were in the high-motivation condi-tion and the other half were in the low-motivation condi-tion. The clips were arranged in a random order.

Participants

The participants, who acted as judges, were 66 stu-dents enrolled in introductory psychology classes. Inthose classes, persuasion and deception were discussedsuperficially, if at all. Participants were recruited towatch the videotape and rate how honest each of the tar-gets seemed. For their participation, the judges receivedclass extra credit. Four of the judges did not completethe study or did not follow instructions, and 2 judgeswere excluded from the final sample because their firstlanguage was not English.

Judging Procedure

Each judge was given written instructions thatincluded the four issues that the targets would addressand the involvement manipulation. The instructionsstated that the targets might sometimes try to give a falseimpression, sometimes being dishonest and sometimesbeing honest. Judges were told that they should evaluatehow sincere each target seemed after each statement.Furthermore, the instructions also introduced theinvolvement manipulation. In the high-involvementcondition, the judges were told that after completing thefirst task (i.e., the evaluation of target sincerity), theywould be asked some questions concerning the argu-ments presented in the video and that the successfulcompletion of the task was associated with intelligenceand good social skills. Judges in the low-involvementcondition were told that after viewing the tape, theywould be asked questions regarding their thoughtsabout several issues different from those discussed in thetapes and that the task was not aimed at assessing intelli-gence or abilities but at evaluating what people thoughtabout the issues.

After the judges read the instructions, the videotapedclips were presented. The judges rated each of the 64clips on a 7-point scale anchored at very insincere (1) and

very sincere (7). To simplify the task, focus the judges’attention, and reduce tedium (so that judges in all condi-tions would attend fully to the rating task), the judgeswere asked to make only one rating per clip. After thefinal clip was shown, a manipulation check was adminis-tered where the judges were asked how important theissues presented were to them on the videotape on a7-point scale ranging from not very important (1) to veryimportant (7), along with some filler questions. Subse-quently, judges were debriefed.

Manipulation Check

Ratings of issue importance by judges in the high- andlow-involvement conditions were significantly different,t(38) = 2.08, p < .05. As expected, judges assigned to thehigh-involvement condition regarded the issues on thetapes as more important (M = 3.81) than did thosejudges assigned to the low-involvement condition (M =3.05). These ratings were below the midpoint of thescale, suggesting that people in general did not considerthese issues as not very important to them. Furthermore,men and women did not differ in their judgments of taskimportance and there was no interaction between sexand involvement condition on the manipulation checkmeasure.

RESULTS

Differentiating Honestand Dishonest Statements

The data were analyzed using a 2 (judge’s involve-ment: low/high) × 2 (judge’s sex) × 2 (target’s motiva-tion: low/high) × 2 (target’s sex) × 2 (type of message:honest/dishonest) mixed-design analysis of variance.Judge involvement and judge sex were between-participants factors, and target motivation, target sex,and message type were within-participants factors. Thedependent measure was judges’ sincerity ratings, wherea higher score indicated that the message seemed moresincere, and the judges were the unit of analysis.

Previous research has shown that people can differen-tiate honest from dishonest statements at a level betterthan chance (e.g., DePaulo & Rosenthal, 1979), and asignificant main effect for type of message replicated thisfinding. Overall, honest statements were rated as signifi-cantly more sincere (M = 4.52) than were dishonest state-ments (M = 4.14), F(1, 56) = 57.27, p < .0001. There wasalso a slight positivity bias in the ratings of sincerity,where both honest and dishonest statements were ratedhigher than the midpoint of the scale.

Effects of Judges’ Involvement

We predicted that judges’ involvement would berelated to their accuracy at differentiating between hon-

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est and dishonest statements. This hypothesis was sup-ported. The Judge Involvement × Type of Message inter-action, which tests the hypothesis, was significant, F(1,56) = 4.14, p < .05.

As Figure 1 shows, the difference between the ratingsfor honest and dishonest statements made by the judgesin the low-involvement condition was significantlygreater than the difference between the ratings of hon-est and dishonest statements by judges in the high-involvement condition. Judges in the low-involvementcondition were very successful at distinguishing betweenhonest and dishonest statements, rating the honest state-ments as more sincere (M = 4.60) than the dishoneststatements (M = 4.11). Although judges in the high-involvement condition also rated honest statements asmore sincere (M = 4.45) than dishonest statements (M =4.17), they did so to a smaller degree than judges in thelow-involvement condition. A post hoc WSD Tukey testrevealed that the difference between the mean ratings ofhonest and dishonest statements by high-involvementjudges was not significant WSD(29) = 2.76, p = ns, MSE =.31. This test also revealed that participants in the low-involvement condition rated the honest statements assignificantly more sincere than the dishonest state-ments, WSD = 4.82, p < .01, MSE = .31 (see Figure 1).

Differential Detection of Deception:Target Motivation Effects and Sex

The interaction between Target Motivation × Type ofMessage was marginally significant. Judges differenti-ated between the honest and the dishonest statementsmore when targets were in the high-motivation condi-tion (honest = 4.46, dishonest = 3.99) rather than thelow-motivation condition (honest = 4.58, dishonest =4.28), F(1, 56) = 3.77, p < .06. The Target Sex × Type ofMessage interaction was significant, F(1, 56) = 79.96, p <.0001. Judges distinguished between females’ honestand dishonest statements (M = 4.8 honest, 3.9 dishon-est), whereas honest and dishonest statements by maleswere not distinguished from each other (M = 4.25 hon-est, 4.34 dishonest). The Judge Sex × Type of Messageinteraction also was significant; women were better atdistinguishing between honest and dishonest statements(M = 4.57, honest; M = 4.07 dishonest) than were men(M = 4.48, honest; M = 4.20, dishonest), F(1, 56) = 4.39, p <.05. Although it was not predicted, there was a significantmain effect for target motivation. Targets in the low-motivation condition were rated as significantly moresincere (M = 4.43) than targets in the high-motivationcondition (M = 4.23), F(1, 56) = 12.02, p < .05. This differ-ence could be due to highly motivated targets beingmore anxious during the task and therefore seemingmore deceptive.

Sex Differences inPerceptions of Sincerity

In addition, there was a significant Target Sex × Tar-get Motivation interaction, F(1, 56) = 73.12, p < .001,where target women in the low-motivation conditionwere rated as more sincere (M = 4.76) than target womenin the high-motivation condition (M = 3.98) regardlessof the type of message (honest/dishonest). Men, in con-trast, showed the reverse pattern. Target men in thehigh-motivation condition were rated as more sincere(M = 4.48) than target men in the low-motivation condi-tion (M = 4.11). Finally, a three-way interaction betweenjudge Sex, judge involvement, and target sex was found,F(1, 56) = 4.62, p < .05. Female judges in both the high-and low-involvement conditions rated female targets asmore sincere than male targets. Male judges in the high-involvement condition rated male targets as more sin-cere than female targets, but male judges in the low-involvement condition rated female targets as more sin-cere than male targets (see Table 1 for a review of themeans for all findings).

DISCUSSION

The results of this study provide initial evidence thatthe degree of involvement in the task of deception detec-tion, and consequently the level of cognitive processingused, plays an important part in the ability to detectdeception. Specifically, judges who were highly involved,and who therefore presumably employed central routeprocessing and attended primarily to the verbal mes-sage, were less effective at differentiating between hon-est and dishonest statements. In contrast, less-involved

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Figure 1 Judges’ ratings of perceived sincerity as a function of in-volvement and the type of message presented.

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judges, who were presumably using peripheral process-ing and attending more to nonverbal cues, were moreeffective at differentiating between honest and dishon-est statements.

Other results of this study replicated DePaulo andKirkendol’s (1988) finding of a motivational impair-ment effect. Judges were better able to detect deceptionwhen the deceptive messages came from people whowere highly motivated not to be caught (high motiva-tion). We also found that women were better at detectingdeception than men, perhaps due to women’s ability todecode emotions using nonverbal cues more accuratelythan men (Ekman, 1985). However, men were better atdeceiving than were women. Finally, targets with highmotivation, regardless if they were being honest or dis-honest, were, in general, rated as less sincere than thosewith lower motivation, possibly because the former tar-gets were more anxious during the encoding procedurethan were the latter targets.

These results may be interpreted taking into accountEkman’s (1985) suggestion that the detection of decep-tion is a two-step process. First, a lie detector must iden-tify the cues that predict deception, and second, he orshe must interpret those cues correctly. The results ofthis study suggest that a person’s involvement in the liedetection task may play a crucial role in the first step,when the cues that will ultimately be used to judge thehonesty of a message are identified. Specifically, peoplewho attend to the central cues in a message (i.e., the ver-bal content) are less effective at distinguishing betweenhonest and dishonest statements than are people who donot pay attention to the central cues. As our study shows,highly involved people, who presumably were using cen-tral route processing, were unable to differentiate sig-nificantly between honest and dishonest statements.This inadequacy suggests that highly involved people didnot identify the most revealing cues to deception (i.e.,nonverbal cues) because they were paying more atten-tion to the central arguments, thereby hindering theprocess of lie detection.

Although it could be argued that our high-involvement manipulation may have shifted the judges’focus of attention toward the verbal portion of the mes-sage rather than to the use of central route processing,this appears unlikely. Prior research (DePaulo, Lassiter, &Stone, 1982) showed no difference in accuracy betweenjudges who were told to focus on the words rather thanthe visual cues. Because simply focusing attention on thewords in a deceptive message is insufficient to increasejudges’ accuracy at detection deception, it appears morelikely that high-involvement judges were engaged in cen-tral route processing.

It is not clear from the results of this study, however,what the people in the low-involvement condition were

monitoring. We assume from our theoretical analysisthat people in the low-involvement condition wereattending more to nonverbal behaviors, which are mostclosely associated with deception. As a result, thesejudges were better able to identify the cues associatedwith deception and thus had a greater probability ofinterpreting at least some cues correctly.

The results of our study permit reinterpretation of theresults of earlier research in which the suspiciousness ofjudges was manipulated. For instance, Toris andDePaulo (1985) hypothesized that people who are suspi-cious of others will attend to cues they believe are relatedto deception because those cues are harder to control.But contrary to their hypothesis, the researchers foundthat people who suspected deception in others were notbetter at detecting deception than those who were notsuspicious. Toris and DePaulo (1985) concluded thatsuspiciousness destroyed the judges’ confidence in theirinterpersonal skills and decreased judges’ confidence inthe target person.

In another study (Zuckerman, Spiegel, DePaulo, &Rosenthal, 1982), judges were shown videotapes of faceor body cues paired with audio cues. The cues on thetapes were dramatizations of four affective conditionsthat varied along two dimensions: positive-negative anddominant-submissive. There were also four suspicious-ness conditions, in which judges were either told that theperson on the tape never lied, sometimes lied, very oftenlied, or were told nothing about lying. Zuckerman et al.(1982) found that as people’s suspiciousness increased,they became less accurate at decoding the true affectivestate of the target, especially when it involved facial cues.

Forrest, Feldman / DETECTING DECEPTION 123

TABLE 1: Mean Sincerity Ratings Table for All Cells

Female Judges Male Judges

Low High Low HighInvolvement Involvement Involvement Involvement

Female targetsLow motivation

Honest 4.56 (.70) 4.37 (.62) 4.60 (.61) 4.34 (.81)Dishonest 3.25 (.46) 3.45 (.77) 3.65 (.80) 3.57 (1.11)

High motivationHonest 5.22 (.70) 5.28 (.62) 5.21 (.90) 4.80 (.83)Dishonest 4.23 (.87) 4.46 (.95) 4.58 (.90) 4.27 (1.02)

Male targetsLow motivation

Honest 4.67 (.74) 4.48 (.70) 4.43 (.76) 4.24 (.60)Dishonest 4.39 (.70) 4.55 (.78) 4.47 (.71) 4.58 (.54)

Male targetsHigh motivation

Honest 4.10 (.55) 3.83 (.83) 3.98 (1.08) 4.25 (.65)Dishonest 4.08 (.72) 4.16 (.74) 4.21 (.76) 4.29 (.66)

NOTE: N = 15 in all cells. Standard deviations are in parentheses.Higher scores indicate that the targets were judged to be more sincere.

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However, the results of the Toris and DePaulo (1985)and Zuckerman et al. (1982) studies can be viewed dif-ferently in light of our results. When judges are primedto suspect deception, the task of detecting it becomesmore personally relevant and more motivated. Fein(1996) argued that suspicion may produce thinking thatis active and sophisticated, and he shows that suspiciouspeople, when making an inference, are less susceptibleto a correspondence bias than people who are not suspi-cious. In the case of deception, suspiciousness might, insome cases, increase people’s active and systematicthinking. If suspiciousness increases the likelihood ofsystematic processing, then attention to the verbalaspects of a message would increase. Because verbal cuesare less revealing of deception than are nonverbal cues,we might expect the ability to differentiate between hon-est and dishonest statements to decrease when peopleare suspicious, a possibility that would help explain theresults of Toris and DePaulo (1985) and Zuckerman etal. (1982).

The difference in accuracy between our high- andlow-involvement conditions also attests to the feasibilityof teaching people strategies for becoming better at dis-tinguishing between honest and dishonest statements.Past attempts to teach deception detection have beenmoderately successful, but the main focus has been togive feedback about the honesty or dishonesty of a spe-cific message (Zuckerman, Koestner, & Alton, 1984).Judges’ accuracy at detecting deception increased onlywhen they judged targets for whom feedback was pro-vided. Increases in accuracy did not generalize across dif-ferent targets. The results of our study suggest an alter-nate approach. Participants who used peripheralprocessing were at an advantage when distinguishingbetween honest and dishonest statements. Differentprocessing styles could be studied empirically to deter-mine their effect on the accuracy of deceptiondetection.

Our study replicated the motivational impairmenteffect found by DePaulo et al. (1988), in which judgesmore easily distinguished honest and dishonest mes-sages from targets who were highly aroused (high moti-vation). In addition, targets in our high-motivation con-dition were rated as lower in sincerity than targets in thelow-motivation condition. This finding suggests that thejudges perceived more anxiety among the targets fromthe high-motivation condition, which translated intojudgments of insincerity, regardless of whether the com-municators were truthful or deceptive.

Because this study represents an initial attempt tounderstand the effects of a judge’s involvement on thedetection of deception, it is important to point out cer-tain limitations that should be addressed in subsequent

research. Investigating different strategies of expert liedetectors, such as police detectives and customs officials,versus non-expert individuals might be useful (Vrij &Semin, 1996). Second, research should examine whatchannels (verbal, visual, audio, or audiovisual) and spe-cific behaviors (gaze or eye blinking) people in the low-involvement condition are attending to—somethingthat we were not able to assess in this study. Presumably,people in the low-involvement condition attended to thevisual and audiovisual nonverbal channels to a greaterextent than did more highly involved people; futureresearch should consider this question.

By investigating different strategies used by people indetecting deception, a deeper understanding of theprocesses governing these judgments is likely to begained. From previous research, we know that people’sinvolvement promotes different processing styles in thatpeople pay attention to either the central or peripheralaspects of a message. This study provides initial evidencethat attention to peripheral cues increases the accuracyof people’s judgments in distinguishing between honestand dishonest statements. Clearly, the next step is toexamine the actual strategies used by people who areseeking to distinguish the truth from lies under condi-tions of low and high involvement.

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Received August 18, 1997Revision accepted October 5, 1998

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