Individual Differences and Changes in Nonverbal Behavior: Unmasking the Changing Faces of Deception

James Stiff, Steve Corman, Bob Krizek, Eric Snider

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

30 Scopus citations

Abstract

Investigations of deceptive communication have examined a number of nonverbal behaviors as potential correlates of deception; however, reviews of this literature reveal only a handful of behaviors that consistently distinguish deceptive messages from truthful ones. Procedural limitations apparent in some of these studies and an underspecification of individual and discursive factors that affect the production of nonverbal behavior were offered as potential explanations for these findings. The present study sought to reduce the procedural limitations of some prior studies and employed time series analysis to model individual and discursive influences on the response latencies of deceivers and truthtellers. A decay impulse model provided a good description of the data. This model reflects a decaying series of momentary increases (spikes) in the response latency series that were associated with an interviewer's critical questions, and the size of these spikes decreased with each successive critical question. Message veracity and self-monitoring were two variables that combined to affect the fit of the decay impulse model. Implications of these findings are discussed along with suggestions for future research.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)555-581
Number of pages27
JournalCommunication Research
Volume21
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 1994
Externally publishedYes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Language and Linguistics
  • Communication
  • Linguistics and Language

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Individual Differences and Changes in Nonverbal Behavior: Unmasking the Changing Faces of Deception'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this