Face, Body, and Speech as Channels of Communication in the Detection of Deception

Two experiments concerned with the communication of feelings in deceptive and nondeceptive messages are reported. The studies examined how access to different channels (face, body, speech) influenced the accuracy of receivers in detecting (1) senders' attempts to deceive and (2) senders' underlying affect. Also of interest were the interrelations among different receiving abilities. In Experiment 1, receivers viewed a videotape in which each of two senders described acquaintances in deceptive and nondeceptive ways. The vision (face vs. body) and sound (on vs. off) channels were manipulated orthogonally. In Experiment 2, as a partial check on the generalizability of the results of Experiment 1, two additional senders were used, and the sound manipulation was dropped. In both studies, deception was detected better from body than from face cues, but only when the deception involved making a positive description of a disliked person. In Experiment 1 the presence of speech cues resulted in superior detection of deception and also enhanced the recognition of genuine affect in nondeceptive descriptions, while at the same time impairing the recognition of such affect in deceptive communications. In both studies there was an inverse relationship between accuracy in detecting underlying affect and accuracy in recognizing genuine affect. The results are discussed in relation to other findings in this area.