Abstract
In the present study subjects acted as senders and receivers of deceptive and nondeceptive person descriptions. From receivers' ratings of these messages measures of their deception accuracy and leakage accuracy were derived, together with a measure of their accuracy in decoding pure (honest) affect. Corresponding measures of each subject's sending abilities were also derived. One aim of the study was to assess the effect on decoding of prior encoding experience; this was achieved by a manipulation of the order in which subjects acted as senders and receivers. A second aim was to assess the effect on decoding of differential access to communication modalities (audiovisual, audio only, and video only). Correlations among sending measures, among receiving measures, and between sending and receiving measures were also examined, as were the relationships between these measures and (a) gender, and (b) Machiavellianism. Send-before-receive subjects obtained higher decoding accuracy scores than did receive-before-send subjects. The modality manipulation did not affect the decoding of deceptive messages, but pure affect accuracy was greater when audio cues were present. As expected, correlations among sending measures were rather greater than those among receiving measures, but the relationships between sending and receiving measures were stronger than anticipated. None of the sending or receiving measures was related to either gender or Machiavellianism. These findings are discussed in relation to previous research on the verbal and nonverbal communication of deception.
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Reference note
DePaulo, B.M., Rosenthal, R., Green, C.R., & Rosenkrantz, J. Verbal and nonverbal revealingness in deceptive and nondeceptive communictions. Unpublished manuscript, University of Virginia, 1981.
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This research was supported by Social Science Research Council Grant number C00230043. A brief version of this paper was presented at the 91st Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Anaheim, CA, August 1983. The authors are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
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Manstead, A.S.R., Wagner, H.L. & MacDonald, C.J. Deceptive and nondeceptive communications: Sending experience, modality, and individual abilities. J Nonverbal Behav 10, 147–167 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00987612
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00987612