Skip to main content

LUP Student Papers

LUND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Lie Detection in Written Statements by Nonnative and Native Speakers

Volz, Sarah LU (2018) PSYP01 20181
Department of Psychology
Abstract
Detecting lies is crucial in numerous contexts, including situations in which individuals do not communicate in their native language. This study investigated the influence of nonnative language use on lie detection in written statements. An online study prompted 100 native English speakers, referred to as judges, to assess the veracity of truthful and fabricated accounts of job experience written by native and nonnative English speakers. As predicted and found in previous studies using videotaped statements, judges exhibited a significantly greater truth bias towards native than nonnative speakers. This tendency to rate statements by native speakers more often as truthful partly explained why judges were more often correct for truthful... (More)
Detecting lies is crucial in numerous contexts, including situations in which individuals do not communicate in their native language. This study investigated the influence of nonnative language use on lie detection in written statements. An online study prompted 100 native English speakers, referred to as judges, to assess the veracity of truthful and fabricated accounts of job experience written by native and nonnative English speakers. As predicted and found in previous studies using videotaped statements, judges exhibited a significantly greater truth bias towards native than nonnative speakers. This tendency to rate statements by native speakers more often as truthful partly explained why judges were more often correct for truthful statements by native than by nonnative speakers. In addition to being more inclined to believe them, judges likely had a particular skill to detect the truth in statements by native speakers. Contrary to the hypothesis, judges were more accurate when judging deceptive statements by nonnative than by native speakers. Exploratory analyses revealed that confidence about a judgment was unrelated to its correctness. The study emphasizes the importance of in-depth text analyses of written statements to determine the linguistic characteristics that led to the observed differences in judges’ accuracy and bias. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Volz, Sarah LU
supervisor
organization
course
PSYP01 20181
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
keywords
lie detection, deception detection, nonnative speakers, language proficiency, lying, credibility
language
English
id
8948317
date added to LUP
2018-06-13 09:30:44
date last changed
2018-06-13 09:30:44
@misc{8948317,
  abstract     = {{Detecting lies is crucial in numerous contexts, including situations in which individuals do not communicate in their native language. This study investigated the influence of nonnative language use on lie detection in written statements. An online study prompted 100 native English speakers, referred to as judges, to assess the veracity of truthful and fabricated accounts of job experience written by native and nonnative English speakers. As predicted and found in previous studies using videotaped statements, judges exhibited a significantly greater truth bias towards native than nonnative speakers. This tendency to rate statements by native speakers more often as truthful partly explained why judges were more often correct for truthful statements by native than by nonnative speakers. In addition to being more inclined to believe them, judges likely had a particular skill to detect the truth in statements by native speakers. Contrary to the hypothesis, judges were more accurate when judging deceptive statements by nonnative than by native speakers. Exploratory analyses revealed that confidence about a judgment was unrelated to its correctness. The study emphasizes the importance of in-depth text analyses of written statements to determine the linguistic characteristics that led to the observed differences in judges’ accuracy and bias.}},
  author       = {{Volz, Sarah}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Lie Detection in Written Statements by Nonnative and Native Speakers}},
  year         = {{2018}},
}