The Effect of Looking Behavior on Perceptions of a Communicator's Credibility¹

Abstract

A courtroom simulation technique was employed to examine the effects of a communicator's looking behavior on observers' perceptions of his credibility. Half of the subjects heard testimony presented on behalf of a defendent by a witness (one of three confederates) who was visually presented as either looking directly toward the target of his communication (gaze maintenance) or slightly downward (gaze aversion) while testifying. The other half of the subjects merely heard the audio portion of the testimony. The results indicated that witnesses who averted their gaze were perceived to be less credible and, ultimately, the defendant for whom they testified was judged as more likely to be guilty. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for research concerned with the communicative effects of visual behavior.

Are Eyes Windows to a Deceiver's Soul? Children's Use of Another's Eye Gaze Cues in a Deceptive Situation.

“…For example, information about where an object or person is hidden may be revealed by the unintentional gaze of a person who claims ignorance about the hiding location. Indeed, studies have found that adults readily use another individual's eye gaze displays to detect and infer deception (Hemsley & Doob, 1978;Kraut & Poe, 1980). In the developmental literature, however, whether and how children use eye gaze cues when an individual is deceptive and communicates untruthful messages has not been examined.…”

Tell-tale eyes: Children's attribution of gaze aversion as a lying cue.

“…This is one of the few studies to examine young children's mentalistic interpretation of gaze in the context of dyadic social interaction as compared with object-oriented attention. Furthermore, it broadens the focus of previous work on children's use of gaze during cooperative communication to the context of deceptive communication in which gaze is known to play a key role for adults (e.g., Hemsley & Doob, 1978; also see current adult data). Our data revealed that children as young as 6 years old are more likely to judge speakers to be lying if they avoid rather than maintain eye contact with their interactant.…”

“…Nevertheless, because people typically display a high degree of mutual gaze during conversation, gaze aversion represents a negative deviation from the norm and, as a result, constitutes a highly salient and suspicion-arousing behavior (Hemsley & Doob, 1978). Thus, adults' deeply rooted belief that liars avert their eyes more than truth tellers acts as a potent stereotype that influences their social judgments and behavior just as if it was a valid cue.…”

What do we really know about witness preparation?

“…Because Hemsley and Doob (1978) used an all or nothing manipulation of looking behavior, their findings are of limited significance to witness preparation experts and courtroom communication specialists. These practitioners (e.g., Leathers, 1997;Smith & Malandro, 1985) place more importance on a series of studies in nonlegal settings showing that people's looking behavior while they are speaking has a greater impact on observers' ratings of their credibility than their looking behavior while listening.…”

“…To examine the relation between witnesses' looking behaviors and jurors' perceptions of their credibility, Hemsley and Doob (1978) created two videotaped versions of a defense witness's testimony in a hypothetical robbery case. In the gaze maintenance version, the witness (a confederate) looked steadily toward an offscreen attorney (another confederate) who was asking him questions.…”