Justifications Offered, Questions Asked, and Linguistic Patterns in Deceptive and Truthful Monetary Interactions

Michael T. Braun () and Lyn M. Swol
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Michael T. Braun: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Lyn M. Swol: University of Wisconsin-Madison

Group Decision and Negotiation, 2016, vol. 25, issue 3, No 8, 661 pages

Abstract: Abstract In this study, we investigate verbal production in people playing a monetary negotiation game who freely chose to lie or tell the truth. Participants were randomly assigned to the role of allocator or recipient; the allocator divided a small amount of money and was tasked with convincing the recipient to accept their share. Allocators were free to lie, and 30 % did. Our goal is to investigate the use of justifications, questions, and linguistics to assess if these factors differ between those telling the truth, lying by omission, and lying by commission. We find that liars were more likely to use some types of justifications, while truth-tellers were more likely to assert that their offer was fair. Recipient questions were unrelated to successful detection of deception, and linguistic patterns were largely non-significant, with the exception of liars using more negations. We also find no connection between emotions felt by allocators (more guilt for liars) and linguistic patterns, replicating past results. We discuss how these results mesh with past findings, offer discussion about what this means for the field, and consider where research on linguistic differences between liars and truth-tellers should go next.

Keywords: LIWC; Deception; Contextual differences; Guilt; Deception justification; Interrogation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10726-015-9455-5

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