Detecting Deception and Judge’s Involvement: Lower Task Involvement Leads to Better Lie Detection

Videotaped samples of target individuals making honest or dishonest statements were shown to 66 male and female participants who judged each sample in terms of honesty. The participants were either highly involved in the judging task or relatively uninvolved. It was assumed that highly involved participants would engage in central route processing and therefore attend more to the verbal message, whereas less-involved participants would engage in peripheral route processing and therefore attend more to the nonverbal behavior of the targets. Because nonverbal cues are most indicative of deception, it was hypothesized—and found—that low-involvement participants would be more accurate at detecting deception than would high-involvement participants. Furthermore, gender differences and support for a motivational impairment effect were found, in which lies told by people who were highly motivated to lie successfully were more easily detected.