This exploratory study examines linguistic and structural features of written narratives for predictive value in determining the likelihood of veracity or deception. Sixty narratives written by suspects and victims identified through the investigation of criminal incidents provided the database. The law enforcement context allowed for the examination of communication under stress. Using a retrospective approach, the veracity or deception of the narratives had already been determined; therefore, the study was able to focus on the degree to which selected linguistic and structural attributes were able to predict veracity and deception. Six research questions guided the study, drawn from theoretical works and research in psychology, linguistics, and criminal justice. Three questions asked whether a positive relationship exists between deception of the narratives and the narrative attributes of equivocation, negation, and relative length of the prologue partition. Three questions asked whether a positive relationship exists between veracity of the narratives and unique sensory details, emotions in the conclusion partition, and quoted discourse. Support was found for the three questions relating to deception and for a relationship between veracity and unique sensory details. Weak support was found for a relationship between veracity and emotions in the conclusion partition. No relationship was found with veracity and the general category of quoted discourse. When quoted discourse without quotation marks was examined separately, a weak relationship with veracity was found. An additional finding was a relationship between relative length of the criminal incident partition and veracity. A logistic regression model was developed to predict veracity or deception using the six predictors from the research questions. The resulting model correctly classified the examined narratives at an 82.1% classification level. The most significant predictor of veracity was unique sensory details; the most significant predictor of deception was length of the prologue partition. The analysis of the examined narratives written by suspects and victims suggests that linguistic and structural features of written narratives are predictive of the likelihood of veracity and deception. These results lend support to the Undeutsch Hypothesis (1989) that truthful narratives differ from fabricated narratives in structure and content. / Ph. D.

Background: Multi-level marketing (MLM) is a specific type of direct selling where distribution and sales are facilitated through various levels of independent distributors. The MLM industry has changed through social media and it has become a channel for the distributors to communicate with customers and potential distributors. The downside to this development is that Internet and social media has made lies and exaggerations, digital deception, more common. Purpose and research questions: The purpose of this research is to investigate deceptive social media practices done by distributors of MLM firms operating in Sweden and discuss them from an ethical perspective. 1. What characteristics drive distributors in MLM firms to participate in practices that can be perceived as deceptive? 2. What deceptive practices on social media by distributors can be identified? 3. How do former distributors view the ethics of their own practices versus the practices of other distributors? Is self deception an aspect to consider? Method: The study applies a qualitative method to an explorative, cross-sectional research design. The collection of empirical data was done by conducting 9 semi-structured interviews with former MLM distributors. Result: Characteristics that drive deceptive practices are training, authority, transferal of norms and validating behaviour. Six deceptive practices were identified: pretending to be consumers on other distributors’ posts, manipulating before and after pictures, lying and exaggerating about the benefits of the products, pretending to be potential recruits, falsely describing the benefits of the business opportunity and charging extra for shipping. Former distributors were more willing to blame other distributors for unethical behaviour than themselves, which may be due to self deception. Contribution of the study: This study contributes with a modern perspective of MLM distributors. It extends existing research of ethical issues within MLM and contributes with the addition of self deception to provide deeper understanding.

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.

The current study applied classic cognitive capacity models to examine the effect of cognitive load on deception. The study also examined whether the manipulation of cognitive load would result in the magnification of differences between liars and truth-tellers. In the first study, 87 participants engaged in videotaped interviews while being either deceptive or truthful about a target event. Some participants engaged in a concurrent secondary task while being interviewed. Performance on the secondary task was measured. As expected, truth tellers performed better on secondary task items than liars as evidenced by higher accuracy rates. These results confirm the long held assumption that being deceptive is more cognitively demanding than being truthful. In the second part of the study, the videotaped interviews of both liars and truth-tellers were shown to 69 observers. After watching the interviews, observers were asked to make a veracity judgment for each participant. Observers made more accurate veracity judgments when viewing participants who engaged in a concurrent secondary task than when viewing those who did not. Observers also indicated that participants who engaged in a concurrent secondary task appeared to think harder than participants who did not. This study provides evidence that engaging in deception is more cognitively demanding than telling the truth. As hypothesized, having participants engage in a concurrent secondary task led to the magnification of differences between liars and truth tellers. This magnification of differences led to more accurate veracity rates in a second group of observers. The implications for deception detection are discussed.

The ability to detect deception is of critical value in criminal and investigative contexts. This study has investigated beliefs about deception detection held by police officers (N = 63) and police students (N = 130). The results show that there are inconsistencies when comparing the beliefs to empirical research findings. One example is the belief that liars avert their gaze. The results are discussed and contrasted with the Truth-Default Theory. Instead of a focus on cues that are probabilisticallyassociated with deception, the Truth-Default Theory focuses on contextualized communication content. The theory recognizes that people are truth biased. Truth-Default Theory proposes that reliance on cues pushes the accuracy of deception detection to the level of chance.

A good professional-patient relationship is important to clinical practice, which may be compromised by deception. Deception research in physical therapy is scant. The current study investigated how the topic of patient deception is addressed in Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) educational curriculum, explore DPT students’ beliefs about deception and attitudes toward patient deception, and examine the effects of a pedagogical intervention on DPT students’ beliefs about deception and attitudes toward patient deception. The first objective was pursued by a descriptive survey sent to 217 DPT programs in the US. The second and third objectives were achieved by one-group pretest-posttest design provided to 17 DPT students before and after an educational workshop. Most DPT programs minimally include the topic of patient deception within their curriculum. DPT students held several inaccurate beliefs about the indicators of deception and negative attitudes toward patients who lied. After the educational intervention, students’ inaccurate beliefs were corrected and negative attitudes were reduced. Patient deception seems to be an under-addressed topic in current physical therapy education. An education workshop improved students’ beliefs about deception and attitudes toward to patient deception. Implications of deception research and theory in the applied practice of physical therapy are discussed.

<p>The present dissertation takes the multi-faceted phenomenon of deception as its point of departure. The aim is to make a case for deception as a social phenomenon, and to frame theoretically and define the skills and abilities that make deception possible.</p><p>A theoretical model based on a number of ideal types is constructed. The purpose of the model is to differentiate particular aspects of deception, and the model is illustrated with examples of actions of more or less well-known impostors. The examples were collected from a variety of sources, such as autobiographies and television programs.</p><p>As a first step, the legal definition of deception, i.e. fraud, and statistics on crimes of deception in Sweden are presented. Different theoretical approaches are also discussed; deception as a personality trait, and deception as communication and interaction.</p><p>In order to illuminate the social dimensions, it is emphasized that deception constitutes a particular type of relationship between deceiver and deceivee. This particular form of interaction exploits elementary forms, and it is also asymmetrical in terms of the intentions of the parties involved.</p><p>The concept of social competence is used to describe the skills and abilities required for successful acts of deception. It is argued that the social competence of deceivers consists of three types: strategic, normative, and dramaturgic competencies. The strategic competency involves being goal-rational and strategic, for example, the ability to predict the actions of the potential addressee. In the normative competency, norms and reference to norms are used strategically. The dramaturgic competency represents an operationalization and enactment of the two other competencies, and resembles the preparation and performance of an actor.</p><p>The different contexts in which deception can occur are also discussed. A preliminary typology is presented, with the aim of demonstrating the difficulties in drawing clear lines between various types of deception. The extended approach to deception also means that it can be viewed as a part of everyday social interaction.</p><p>Finally, some thoughts on deception in the light of societal changes are presented. It is argued that the increasing demands on people to promote themselves in various ways in today’s society can be perceived as an invitation to deception and fabrication. These demands can generate feelings of inferiority and a fear of eventually being unmasked as an impostor, or a phony.</p>

I utilized a design science approach to create an automated kiosk that uses embodied intelligent agents to interview individuals and detect changes in arousal, behavior, and cognitive effort by using psychophysiological information systems. This dissertation achieves three primary purposes.First, I describe the creation of this new Information Technology artifact, discuss design choices, and show the completed prototype.Second, related to this new system, I propose a unique class of intelligent agents, which are described as Special Purpose Embodied Conversational Intelligence with Environmental Sensors (SPECIES). I outline a system model that frames the conceptual components of SPECIES agents, provide design principles for developing SPECIES agents, and discuss some of the research implications of the various components in the model.Third, based on the SPECIES paradigm, I present five studies that evaluate different parts of the model. These studies form the foundational research for the development of the automated kiosk. In the first study, participants interacted with an automated interviewing agent via a chat-based modality (108 participants). The study clearly demonstrates the strong, positive correlation of both response time and the number of times a message is edited to deceitful responses. The software developed became the heart of the kiosk. The second study evaluated changing human decision-making by including influence tactics in decision aids (41 participants). This paper-based decision experiment showed that framing decision aids as appeals to individuals' values possibly change individuals' decisions and was the basis for study 4. The third study examined human-computer interaction and how SPECIES agents can change perceptions of information systems by varying appearance and demeanor (88 participants). Instantiations that had the agents embodied as males were perceived as more powerful, while female embodied agents were perceived as more likeable. Similarly, smiling agents were perceived as more likable than neutral demeanor agents. The fourth study assessed how incorporating impression management techniques into embodied conversational agents can influence human perceptions of the system (88 participants). The impression management techniques proved to be very successful in changing user perceptions. Specifically, agents that performed self-promotion were perceived as more powerful, trustworthy and expert. Agents that performed ingratiation were perceived as more attractive. In the fifth study, I used an embodied agent to interview people who had either constructed a fake bomb and packed it into a bag or had only packed clothes into a bag (60 participants). The agent used eye-tracking technology to capture pupil dilation and gaze behavior. When combined with vocal measurements, the kiosk technology was able to achieve over 93% accuracy in one trial.

Standard psychological assessment instruments have not produced consistent results by which decisions can be made regarding the appropriate placement and legal disposition of an individual who has committed a sexual offense. The purpose of the present study was to systematically investigate deception and dissimulation as measured by three assessment instruments commonly utilized with sex offenders. A denial classification system was utilized in order to classify offenders into categories based on their level of admission to the legal system. The four group classification system did not produce significant differences on all measures of deception and dissimulation. Contrary to previous research, admitters were found to respond more defensively than deniers on one of the assessment instruments. In addition, partial deniers were identified as responding significantly differently from both admitters and deniers on a separate instrument. The differences found suggest that sex offenders' level of deception is multifaceted. Difficulties in identifying classificatory strategies and implications for theoretical conceptions of denial within this population are discussed.

University of Macau / Faculty of Arts and Humanities. / Philosophy and Religious Studies Programme