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Can Men or Women Detect Deception from Non-verbal/Verbal Cues More Accurately?
Emily Sgueglia, Ashley Souza, Matthew Slepecki
Nichols College

Running head: MEN OR

WOMEN DECEPTION

Can Men or Women Detect Deception from Non-verbal/Verbal Cues Better?

Detecting deception or believing when someone is telling the truth is something done
every day by everyone, all over the world. It happens so often that people assume they can
accurately decide whether the person in front of them is lying, or telling the truth, but are they
doing so correctly? Are men better at detecting deception, or are women? Can people actually
detect deception? Detecting deception can be used in any field, whether it be psychology,
criminal justice, or just day to day life. Other studies that were looked at found that they thought
could detect deception better than they actually could (Vrij, Edward & Bull, 2001). Other studies
found that deception is likely to be detected, regardless of intimacy levels or relationships (Cole,
Leets & Bradac, 2002). This study focuses on whether people can accurately detect when they
are being lied to, or told the truth, from watching filmed interviews, and if men or women can do
so more accurately.
This research is exploratory in nature, looking to discover answers about the level of
accuracy in detecting the truth or deception, and which gender can do so more effectively. This
research was brought on by an inner curiosity about deceitfulness, and in interest in psychology
and criminal justice. The courses taken in these two fields of study have lead people to wonder
how people react to others when they feel they are being told the truth, or when they feel they are
being lied to, and if people can tell when each is happening. Also, wondering if gender makes a
difference in ones capability of discovering deception.
Other research has found that there are stereotypical behaviors present when someone is
lying (Atanasova, Comita , Melina & Stoyanova, 2014) and (Cheih-Yu, Xi & Jianxin, 2013), and
this would be useful in detecting deception. This study will further upon this theory, in that the
participants will be trying to identify stereotypical behaviors to decide if they are being told the

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truth or being told a lie. Also, studies have looked at different forms of communication, such as
videos, to tell if how the video is shown will influence how the participants feel about the truth
or deception (Kang & Nam, 2015). Another research experiment showed that lies are stronger
than truths, in that deception is more easily detected (Sporer, Masip & Cramer, 2014). This
research will take the past studies a step further by involving gender and concluding if one
gender can detect deception or the truth more accurately than the other.
The concept investigated by this research is that one will be able to detect the truth from a
lie, by paying attention to nonverbal and verbal cues during the experiment. This will be reported
by the participants and scored against the video of the interviews they were shown, whether they
accurately guessed if the statements were true or false. The independent variable is presence of
telling body language/stereotypical lying behaviors, and also the gender of the participant. The
dependent variable is the amount of statements they accurately guess on the truth or lie scale.
The goal of this study is to show how accurately we can detect deception verse how accurately
we think we can detect deception, and if one gender can do so more effectively than the other.
Previous studies from this topic show that stereotypes from different cultures vary and it
makes a difference in detecting deception. For this study, participants will all be from the same
culture. Other studies also didn't have direct observation with the person giving the statements,
making it difficult for nonverbal cues to be communicated. This is to be avoided by our
experiment by showing video clips, allowing the non-verbal cues to be witnessed by the
participants. Also, some research showed only 10 second clips of a story and were told to detect
deception or the truth. This experiment will provide a 3 minute long video to be judged, but no
content is missing from these statements to make it an inaccurate judgement.

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From this research, people believe that deception will be detected accurately based on
nonverbal cues, and that women will be able to detect deception more accurately than men. It is
hoped for this research to prove this is true because nonverbal cues are an important part of
communication and typically give off the answers that aren't verbally coming out. Also, it is
believed by the researchers that women have a stronger attention to detail, making them more
capable of accurately detecting deception. This topic should be pursued because it is an
important aspect in everyday life, whether it be at a job, with a partner, friends, or in criminal
cases. Determining the truth from a lie is always something that is debated about and is worth
knowing how accurately can be done.
Method
Participants
The participants in this experiment were General Psychology (typically first year)
students at a small business college. These students were chosen to be subjects for the
Psychology Capstone class' experiments for Applied Research Methods. There are both males
and females in the groups. This group was a convenience sample who received class credit for
participating in this experiment. There were 11 participants from the convenience sample.
Materials
Materials for this experiment include a basic training lesson on identifying stereotypical
body language while people are lying. This training was the first five minutes of a video of a
published author who is a "Lie Detector" on signs to look for in deception (located in Appendix
A). Only the controlled group received this video training. Both groups watched a video of an
interview with a student answering general questions to be judged on being truthful or not

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(located in Appendix B). Also, each participant was given a question sheet to follow along and
record their answers on (located in Appendix C).
Design
This experiment used an independent groups with a post-test only design. One of the
groups in the independent groups is the control group, and the other is the stereo-type trained
group. It is a post-test design because they will only do the experiment once. The groups are
independent because each person in the group is only in that group, and is only tested once. The
dependent variable is the number of statements accurately recognized as truth or lie. This is
operationally defined as the truth being an accurate statement given by the interviewee, and the
lie being an inaccurate statement given by the interviewee. The statistical analysis to be used will
be a 2x2 Factorial ANOVA.
Procedure
For this experiment, the General Psychology students were randomly separated into two
groups, and each individual gave verbal consent to participate in the experiment. One group was
given instruction/training on stereotypical signs of someone lying, such as "fidgeting", or "not
making eye contact", etc. They will be shown the first five minutes of a video clip from an expert
"Lie Detector", located in appendix A. They were directed to look for these things before
watching the interview video, and mark each time they believed the person was lying or telling
the truth. The papers of their responses were collected and scored on their accuracy of detecting
the lies from the truth.
The other group that was not controlled, was given no instruction on stereotypical
behaviors. When this group entered for the experiment, they were directed to record what

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statements they believed were true and what statements they believed were not true. Once they
began the experiment, they were allowed to ask us to pause the video in order to accurately give
their responses and not miss any questions. These responses were also collected and scored on
accuracy.
Students participated individually in this experiment. Each student was tested
individually in a separate classroom and shown the video for them to judge. The experimenter
was a volunteer instructed to administer the video and observe the participant. The experimenter
was in the room during the experiments to observe and record.
After the experiment, each participant was given a debriefing statement (located in
Appendix D). The debriefing statement explained to them that this experiment was set up have
people detect non-verbal cues as signs of deception and to verify if training made a difference in
their ability to detect, also that gender differences were being observed. A 2x2 Factorial ANOVA
was run to determine if there is any significance between detecting deception with or without
training, and if gender had a significant role in detecting deception accurately.
Results:
Thepurposeofthisstudywastodeterminewhetherfemalescoulddetermineifsomeoneisbeing
deceitfulmorethanmales.Wedefinedbeingdeceitfulasbeingdishonest.Twogroupsofpeople
werestudiedinthisexperiment.Onegroupwasamixofmalesandfemalesandtheywatcheda
trainingvideoonhowtodetermineifsomeoneisbeingdeceiving.Theothergroup,mixofmales
andfemales,didnotwatchthetrainingvideo.Bothgroupsthenwatchedtheinterviewwherethe
subjectpurposelyliedinsomeanswers,purposelywashonestinsomeanswers,andpurposely

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maneuveredstereotypicalsignsofdeceit.Therewere21questionsintotal,andaccuracywas
gradedbasedonhowmanyquestionswerecorrectlyanswered(honestyvs.lie).
Thefirstgroupthatwatchedthetrainingvideoconsistedofsixpeople.Fourparticipants
weremaleandtheothertwowerefemale.Theaveragerateofaccuracythatthemalesreceived
was81.03%.Theaveragerateofaccuracythatthefemalesreceivedwas80.95%.Themale
participantsinthisgroupreceivedthescoresasfollows:80.95%,80.95%,67%,and95.2%.The
femaleparticipantscoresareasfollows:76.19%and85.7%.
Thesecondgroupdidnotwatchthetrainingvideo,andjustwatchedtheinterview.This
groupconsistedoffiveparticipants;threemalesandtwofemales.Theaveragerateofaccuracy
forthemaleswas80.95%andtheaveragerateofaccuracyforthefemaleswas78.57%.The
maleparticipantsreceivedthescoresasfollows:71.4%,80.95%,and90.5%.Thefemale
participantsreceivedthescoresasfollows:76.19%and80.95%.
Thestatisticalanalysisthatweusedtodevelopourconclusiononourresultswasa2x2
ANOVA.Wedidthisbecausewehadtwogroupsofgender,maleandfemale,andtwodifferent
typesofgroups,onewithatrainingvideoandonewithout.Aftercompletingthecalculations,we
concludedthatthePvalueforthegroupthatdidntwatchthetrainingvideowas2.83.Thisis
over.05,thereforeitisnotsignificant,anddoesnotsupportourhypothesis.Theothergrouphad
aPvalueof0,whichissignificantanddoessupportourhypothesis.

Discussion:

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Aftercompletingthe2x2ANOVA,weconcludedthatthegroupthatdidntwatchthetraining
videohadaninsignificantPvalue,andthatitdidnotsupportourhypothesis.Wehypothesized
thatregardlessofthefactorofatrainingvideo,femaleswouldstillbeabletodetermineif
someonewasbeingdeceitfulornot.But,ourdataproveduswrong.Inourexperiment,males
weremoreaccuratewhendeterminingifsomeonewasbeingdeceiving.Ontheotherhand,the
groupthatwatchedthetrainingvideohadasignificantPvalue,thereforeourhypothesiswas
correctinthiscase.
Thisstudyrelatestomanypreviousstudiesaboutdeception.Onestudystatedthatpeople
believedtheweredetectingdeceptionmoreaccuratelythantheywere,whichwealsosawinour
study(Vrij,Edward&Bull,2001).Anotherpaststudiesresultsshowedthatpeoplearelikelyto
detectdeception,regardlessofintimacylevelsorrelationships(Cole,Leets&Bradac,2002).
Thiswasrelevanttoourstudybecausetherewasnorelationshipwiththepersonintheinterview
andtheparticipants,buttheparticipantswerestillabletodetectdeceptioninsomeofthe
questions.Thesepaststudieshelpedshapethedirectionoftheexperimentweconducted.
Unfortunately,therewereseverallimitationsinthisexperiment.Thefirstlimitationwas
theamountofparticipantsintheexperiment.Theresearcherswerehopingtoatleasthave20
participantsintotal,butthiswasnotthecase.Severalpeoplesigneduptoparticipateinthis
experiment,butthenfailedtoshowup.Therewasmuchdifficultyinfindingvolunteersforthis
experiment,especiallybothmalesandfemales.Thatwasthesecondlimitation;genderequality.
Theresearcherswantedtohaveabalancedamountofmalesandfemalesbecausewewere
observingmalesandfemalesandthedifferencesbetweenthem.Unfortunately,wedidnthavea
balancedamountofmalesandfemalesandthisdefinitelycouldhaveswayedourresults.Inboth

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groupsofourexperiment,wehadmoremalesthanfemales.Onereasoningtothisisbecauseour
participantswerestrictlyNicholsCollegestudents,andNicholsconsistsofmoremalesthan
femalesbecauseitusedtobeanallboysprivateschool.
Anotherlimitationthatwedealtwithwastheparticipantsknowingthesubjectthatwas
interviewed.Somepeopleknewthesubjectonsuchapersonallevelthattheywouldbeableto
determineifhewaslyingornotbasedonpriorknowledge.Someoftheparticipantsalsodidnot
takethestudythatseriously,andtheydidnotcareiftheyansweredincorrectly.Thelast
limitationtothisstudywascreatingquestionsfortheinterviewthatwerenottoosimplebutnot
toocomplex.Somequestionscanbeansweredinseveraldifferentways,andpeoplewouldnever
beabletodetermineifitwerealieornot.Forexample,onequestionthatwasaskedinthe
interviewwasWhatisyourfavoritecolor?Theparticipantswouldntbeabletodetermineif
thiswasalieornotunlessthesubjectmaneuveredobviousstereotypicalsignsofdeceit,butthat
wasntalwaysthecase.

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References
Atanasova, M., Comita', P., Melina, S., & Stoyanova, M. (2014). Automatic Detection
of Deception. Tilburg University.
Chieh-Yu, L., Xi, L., & Jianxin, Z. (2013). Sterotypes of deceptive behaviors: a cross cultural
study between China and Japan. Social Behavior and Personality: An International
Journal, 41.2, 335.
Cole, T., Leets, L., Bradac, J. (2002). Deceptive messaging processing: the role of attachment
style and verbal intimacy markers in deceptive message judgements.
Communication Studies, 53.1, 74.
Edwards, V. V. (2013, November 18). How to Tell If Someone is Lying to You [Digital
image]. Retrieved March 8, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0TxMC5QYY
Kang, S., & Nam, Y. (2015). Effect of audiovisual translation mode on perceived
truthfulness of stories on video. Social Behavior and Personality: An International
Journal, 43.1, 137.
Sporer, S., Masip, J., & Cramer, M. (2014). Guidance to detect deception with the Aberdeen
report judgement scales: are verbal content cues useful to detect false accusations?
American Journal of Psychology, 127.1, 43.

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Vrij, A., Edward, K., & Bull, R. (2001). People's insight into their own behavior and speech
content while lying. British Journal of Psychology, 92.2, 373.

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