Exoneration or Observation? Examining a Novel Difference Between Liars and Truth Tellers

Authors

Peter F. Molinaro, Florida International UniversityFollow

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Major/Program

Psychology

First Advisor's Name

Ronald P. Fisher

First Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Chair

Second Advisor's Name

Stephen D. Charman

Second Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Third Advisor's Name

Lindsay C. Malloy

Third Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Fourth Advisor's Name

Jamie Flexon

Fourth Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Keywords

deception, language, pronouns, deception-detection, lying, statements

Date of Defense

3-26-2015

Abstract

Individual cues to deception are subtle and often missed by lay people and law enforcement alike. Linguistic statement analysis remains a potentially useful way of overcoming individual diagnostic limitations (e.g. Criteria based Content Analysis; Steller & Köhnken, 1989; Reality monitoring; Johnson & Raye, 1981; Scientific Content Analysis; Sapir, 1996). Unfortunately many of these procedures are time-consuming, require in-depth training, as well as lack empirical support and/or external validity. The current dissertation develops a novel approach to statement veracity analysis that is simple to learn, easy to administer, theoretically sound, and empirically validated.

Two strategies were proposed for detecting differences between liars' and truth-tellers' statements. Liars were hypothesized to strategically write statements with the goal of self-exoneration. Liars' statements were predicted to contain more first person pronouns and fewer third person pronouns. Truth-tellers were hypothesized to be motivated toward being informative and thus produce statements with fewer first person pronouns and more third person pronouns. Three studies were conducted to test this hypothesis. The first study explored the verbal patterns of exoneration and informativeness focused statements. The second study used a traditional theft paradigm to examine these verbal patterns in guilty liars and innocent truth tellers. In the third study to better match the context of a criminal investigation a cheating paradigm was used in which spontaneous lying was induced and written statements were taken. Support for the first person pronoun hypothesis was found. Limited support was found for the third person pronoun hypothesis. Results, implications, and future directions for the current research are discussed.

Identifier

FI15032161

Recommended Citation

Molinaro, Peter F., "Exoneration or Observation? Examining a Novel Difference Between Liars and Truth Tellers" (2015). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1833.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1833