Automatic deception detection is an important problem with far-reaching implications in many areas, including law enforcement, military and intelligence agencies, social services, and politics. Despite extensive efforts to develop automated deception detection technologies, there have been few objective successes. This is likely due to the many challenges involved, including the lack of large, cleanly recorded corpora; the difficulty of acquiring ground truth labels; and major differences in incentives for lying in the laboratory vs. lying in real life. Another well-recognized issue is that there are individual and cultural differences in deception production and detection, although little has been done to identify them. Human performance at deception detection is at the level of chance, making it an uncommon problem where machines can potentially outperform humans. This thesis addresses these challenges associated with research of deceptive speech. We created the Columbia X-Cultural Deception (CXD) Corpus, a large-scale collection of deceptive and non-deceptive dialogues between native speakers of Standard American English and Mandarin Chinese. This corpus enabled a comprehensive study of deceptive speech on a large scale. In the first part of the thesis, we introduce the CXD corpus and present an empirical analysis of acoustic-prosodic and linguistic cues to deception. We also describe machine learning classification experiments to automatically identify deceptive speech using those features. Our best classifier achieves classification accuracy of almost 70%, well above human performance. The second part of this thesis addresses individual differences in deceptive speech. We present a comprehensive analysis of individual differences in verbal cues to deception, and several methods for leveraging these speaker differences to improve automatic deception classification. We identify many differences in cues to deception across gender, native language, and personality. Our comparison of approaches for leveraging these differences shows that speaker-dependent features that capture a speaker's deviation from their natural speaking style can improve deception classification performance. We also develop neural network models that accurately model speaker-specific patterns of deceptive speech. The contributions of this work add substantially to our scientific understanding of deceptive speech, and have practical implications for human practitioners and automatic deception detection.

In this study the goal was to determine if there was a shift in the extent to which children’s attitudes toward deception change as they age. Participants (N=278) enrolled in grades 3-12 completed a survey assessing their lie acceptability and other factors as potential variables associated with a prodeception attitude. Results indicated that greater lie acceptability was correlated with male children who had self-reported acts of bad behavior. Results also suggest that nontraditional family environments may increase one’s perception of the acceptability of lying. These findings provide potential predictors of the acceptability of lying in children and adolescents that offer insight into the development of antisocial attitudes, which may have practical implications regarding the timing of crucial interventions as to prevent the continuance and escalation of such behaviors in the future.

The Correct Response Negativity (CRN) is an event-related potential component that is affected by the act of deception. However, there have been inconsistent findings on the effect of deception on the CRN. Suchotzki, et al. (2015) suggested that the design of the paradigm used to elicit the deceptive response is what controls the size of the CRN. Specifically, motivation to deceive changes the size of deception relative to telling the truth. This study attempted to follow up on suggestions made by Suchotzki et al. (2015) to investigate if extraneous motivation to lie does indeed invert the ratio of CRN in lie compared to truth responses in a deception experiment by manipulating the motivation to lie. This study used a modification of the image-based guilty knowledge test (GKT) paradigm used in Langleben et al. (2002). The first hypothesis of this experiments was that a larger CRN during deception relative to truth-telling will be observed when participants are not motivated to lie, while a larger CRN during truth-telling relative to deception will be observed when participants are motivated to lie. The hypothesis was not supported. The second hypothesis of this experiment was that the P300 component would be larger when participants were motivated to lie, as compared to when they were instructed to lie. Results indicated that P300 was significantly higher in the lie conditions than in the truth conditions; however, there was no difference in amplitude as a function of whether they were in the informed or motivated lie condition.

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abstract: As deception in cyberspace becomes more dynamic, research in this area should also take a dynamic approach to battling deception and false information. Research has previously shown that people are no better than chance at detecting deception. Deceptive information in cyberspace, specifically on social media, is not exempt from this pitfall. Current practices in social media rely on the users to detect false information and use appropriate discretion when deciding to share information online. This is ineffective and will predicatively end with users being unable to discern true from false information at all, as deceptive information becomes more difficult to distinguish from true information. To proactively combat inaccurate and deceptive information on social media, research must be conducted to understand not only the interaction effects of false content and user characteristics, but user behavior that stems from this interaction as well. This study investigated the effects of confirmation bias and susceptibility to deception on an individual’s choice to share information, specifically to understand how these factors relate to the sharing of false controversial information. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Human Systems Engineering 2019

abstract: There has been an ongoing debate between the relative deterrent power of certainty and severity on deceptive and criminal activity, certainty being the likelihood of capture and severity being the magnitude of the potential punishment. This paper is a review of the current body of research regarding risk assessment and deception in games, specifically regarding certainty and severity. The topics of game theoretical foundations, balance, and design were covered, as were heuristics and individual differences in deceptive behavior. Using this background knowledge, this study implemented a methodology through which the risk assessments of certainty and severity can be compared behaviorally in a repeated conflict context. It was found that certainty had a significant effect on a person’s likelihood to lie, while severity did not. Exploratory data was collected using the dark triad personality quiz, though it did not ultimately show a pattern. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Human Systems Engineering 2019

<p>As a woman who claimed to experienced supernatural phenomena, such as spiritual visions and raptures, Teresa of Ávila had to face accusations of deception while confronting her own doubts of being self-deceived. Both religious authorities and visionary women in sixteenth-century Spain used the idea of deception to either dictate or challenge the dominant religious discourse. Ultimately, Teresa succeed at convincing ecclesial powers of the legitimacy of her experiences, a mandatory step for her canonization. Other visionaries were not as successful, and I analyze whether Teresa’s rhetorical strategies played a role in ensuring her effective defense of the authenticity of her visions.</p> This analysis of Teresa of Ávila as a visionary woman who felt the need to confront the problem of deception questions the usefulness of the traditional interpretation of visionary women as either deceivers or deceived. I argue that deception has traditionally functioned as a tool of sociopolitical marginalization, and that rulers of public discourse have ignored or dismissed the voices of visionary women. This work indicates the urgency of including their stories in the larger discussion on the credibility of women’s accounts of their own life experiences.

本篇研究主要探討自我欺騙如何受到自尊與焦慮的影響，因此以自尊量表區分出高低自尊組，再隨機將之分入高低的焦慮情境，從而觀察其自我欺騙之變化。本研究有兩個假設，即﹝假設一﹞自尊可以緩衝焦慮--即在焦慮程度上，高低自尊與高低情境這兩個因子將呈現交互作用。﹝假設二﹞焦慮對自我欺騙的主要效果達顯著--即高焦慮組比起低焦慮組將會有較高的自我欺騙分數。研究結果發現兩個假設並沒有得到支持。研究者只發現不同自尊的人其情境焦慮程度有差異，即低自尊者比高自尊者有較高的情境焦慮。

本論文分析劇作家馬汀麥當納的劇本《枕頭人》中的「說故事」與「自我欺騙」，論證「說故事」提供本劇四位主要角色自我欺騙式的慰藉，使其得以處理創傷和逃避現實。說故事行為裡的想像和詮釋給說者及聽者／讀者機會去重新建立和詮釋悲慘過去，但同時也讓他們陷入自我欺騙的狀態及真實虛幻交錯的混亂，因為說故事可能使他們開始否認進而承認某種身分，甚而處於特定的故事情節結構，即使面對創傷也能獲得自我安慰。論文第二章檢視卡初利安的自我欺騙。卡初力安是劇中的主要說故事者。此章剖析他如何埋頭於自己創造的想像空間，並將過去的傷痛回憶轉化成自己能接受的故事情節。第三章剖析其他三位聽故事者——麥可、塔帕斯基，和艾瑞爾——的自我欺騙。此章論證聽／讀故事亦造成自我欺騙式的安慰。這三人靠詮釋故事為創傷取得自我安慰的解釋，雖然此舉仍然只是對過去的自我欺騙和逃避，但讓他們可以稍微諒解過去，面對現在。說故事行為和自我欺騙深深影響劇中四位角色，並成為他們自我安慰的方法。雖然自我欺騙蒙蔽他們，使他們無視真正的現實，當他們往回看不忍卒睹的過去時，自我欺騙卻可以稍微抒解他們的傷口。 / This thesis analyzes storytelling and self-deception in Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman, contending that storytelling provides the four main characters in The Pillowman with self-deceptive relief of dealing with their traumas and evading the reality. With the potential of imagination and interpretation, storytelling not only grants storytellers and story-listeners/readers a chance to reconstruct and reinterpret their distressing past, but it also throws them in a state of self-deception and confusion of the interpenetration of reality and fiction when they start to disavow and avow a certain type of identity and live in a specific plot structure that can soothe themselves from their traumas. Examining Katurian, the main storyteller in this play, Chapter Two of the thesis argues that as a storyteller/story-writer, Katurian falls into self-deception which buries himself into an imaginary space he creates and which consoles himself by transforming those agonizing recollections into the versions he can accept. Chapter Three tackles the other three story-listeners, Michal, Tupolski, and Ariel, to argue that in a way, storytelling leads to self-deceptive relief because it provides them with self-consoling explanations for their past to face with their present even though the three characters are trapped in their self-deception and self-evasion in the confrontation with their traumas. Thus, storytelling and self-deception deeply affect the four characters and serve as self-consolation for them. Although self-deception blocks their eyes to see reality, it comforts them to some degrees when they look back to their past.

As a whole, this work serves to illuminate the tragic as a fundamental human phenomenon and an objective fact that is distinct not only from comedy and irony but from other forms of calamity and modes of failure. I consider three distinct sources of philosophical knowledge on tragedy. The first is tragic drama and literature, the second is the theory of the tragic and the third source consists of the employment of the concept of tragedy to discuss events or characters that one encounters in life. I carefully draw upon the first two sources to thicken the elaborations of four different facets of the third. In this process, I extrapolate Szondi’s notion that tragedy is a specific dialectic in a specific space. In the course of this work, I place a greater emphasis upon this general concept of the tragic as opposed to a poetics of tragedy. The dissertation bears out, however, that it is ultimately poetics - and not the dialectic as general concept - that provide us with the richer insights into tragedy as it unravels in life. The specific dialectic of tragedy unravels so as to cause the irreplaceable loss of something of great value. This provides me with a structuring element that ties the four central chapters together. In terms of content, I emphasize also upon the tragic flaw as a set of character traits (manifested by an individual or some form of collective) which keep tragedy in place. The consideration of the figure of Willy Loman allows me to examine the tragedy of failure of expectations which is a distinct category of the tragic and yet it oscillates such that ties together the other themes. A central idea that emerges from an analysis of the overlapping themes is that prior to tragedy is the investment of the deepest inner resources into a process. This investment gives rise to identity and to expectations. As a tragedy unfolds, the source of the identity or of expectation becomes also the birth place or the generator of all threats to this identity and the collapse of long nurtured expectations.