Veracity judgement, not accuracy: Reconsidering the role of facial expressions, empathy, and emotion recognition training on deception detection

Abstract

People hold strong beliefs about the role of emotional cues in detecting deception. While research on the diagnostic value of such cues has been mixed, their influence on human veracity judgments is yet to be fully explored. Here, we address the relationship between emotional information and veracity judgments. In Study 1, the role of emotion recognition in the process of detecting naturalistic lies was investigated. Decoders’ veracity judgments were compared based on differences in trait empathy and their ability to recognize micro-expressions and subtle expressions. Accuracy was found to be unrelated to facial cue recognition and negatively related to empathy. In Study 2, we manipulated decoders’ emotion recognition ability and the type of lies they saw: experiential or affective (emotional and unemotional). Decoders either received emotion recognition training, bogus training, or no training. In all scenarios, training did not affect veracity judgments. Experiential lies were easier to detect than affective lies; however, affective unemotional lies were overall the hardest to judge. The findings illustrate the complex relationship between emotion recognition and veracity judgments, with abilities for facial cue detection being high yet unrelated to deception accuracy.

Training Emotion Recognition Accuracy: Results for Multimodal Expressions and Facial Micro Expressions

“…Importantly, micro expressions did not occur more frequently in deceptive scenarios, although the frequency of deception detection due to inconsistent expressions was significantly above chance. Zloteanu et al ( 2021 ) found a generally high micro expression ERA among their participants, but this was not related to accuracy in judging true or false statements and there was no effect of micro expression training on deception detection. Jordan et al ( 2019 ) likewise found no evidence that micro expression training improves detection of deception.…”

Sitting in Judgment: How Body Posture Influences Deception Detection and Gazing Behavior

“…However, the literature on the emotion-based approach to lie detection is highly contentious [36,38]. While some studies indicate that, in specific scenarios, the ability to detect microexpressions is positively related to deception detection performance [39,40], more recent evaluations find no link between emotional cues and improvements in accuracy [41,42].…”

“…If the posture manipulation has an effect on social acuity, a difference in facial expression recognition ability may be most evident. Second, while the evidence on the relationship between microexpression and deception detection is mixed (especially regarding human judges; [42]), people do hold strong beliefs that facial expressions are diagnostic of deceit [32,35]. If judges in a specific posture show a difference in veracity judgments (beneficial or otherwise), an overreliance on facial cues may explain the effect.…”

“…The maximum test score is 100%. The METT has been used in past studies (e.g., [40][41][42]), and is based on the Brief Affect Recognition Test, which has good validity and reliability [51].…”

“…While such factors have not been found to impact the accuracy of veracity judgments [1], for facial expression recognition it may be a pertinent factor to consider [80]. Such nuanced explorations merit consideration given the importance of demeanor in veracity judgments [42].…”