Overlooking the Obvious: Incentives to Lie

2013/03/01 by Charles F. Bond, Amanda R. Howard, Amanda Howard +2 · 1 citation
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Deception detection and forensic psychology #Psychology of Social Influence #Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending

paper · doi:10.1080/01973533.2013.764302

openalex publication_date 2013/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

Over the years, people have searched for deception cues in the liar's behavior. However, the sender's incentives to lie might be more revealing than behavior. In Experiment 1, an incentive was developed that was predictive of lying. Judges with access to incentive information in addition to behavior achieved almost perfect lie/truth detection. This was not a result of the speakers' behavior being transparent (Experiment 2) but because incentive information was useful to separate lies from truths (Experiments 2 and 3). Experiment 3 revealed that people may forego perfectly diagnostic contextual cues to base their judgments on illusory behavioral cues.

Citations

• The correspondence bias.
• Situational Familiarity, Efficacy Expectations, and the Process of Credibility Attribution
• Strategic use of evidence during police interviews: When training to detect deception works.
• Paraverbal indicators of deception: a meta‐analytic synthesis
• A World of Lies
• Interpersonal Deception Theory

Cited by

• Cheat, cheat, repeat: On the consistency of dishonest behavior in structurally comparable situations

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