The Use of Gesture During Truthful and Fabricated Accounts of a Self-Experience

Abstract

<p>The goal of this research was to identify nonverbal behaviors (eg, gesture use) that may be correlated with recounted (truthful) and invented accounts (lying) of a self-experience. Deception theories suggest that as cognitive load increases our behavior is impacted (DePaulo et al., 2003; Zuckerman, DePaulo, & Rosenthal, 1981). Current research on recounted and invented accounts have primarily relied on Criteria-Based Content Analysis (CBCA) (eg, Vrij & Mann, 2006) to examine verbal responses. To date there is little research investigating the role of nonverbal communication during recounted and invented accounts. We randomly assigned 40 participants to a truth telling or lying condition. In the truth telling condition participants were asked to complete a sorting and stacking task, similar to a common child’s game. In the deception condition participants were merely giving instructions for completing the task and instructed to not actually perform the task. Regardless of the condition, all participants were instructed to convince our interviewer that they did in fact perform the task. We hypothesized that liars would use fewer gestures than truth tellers and that liars would also use gestures that were smaller in size. Data will be analyzed using independent t-tests. This research has implications for false confessions.</p>