Sex Differences in the Identification of LiarsLaura Hancock

Hypothesis:There is a relationship between sex and the ability to identify a liar of the opposite sex.

Intended MethodResearch Participants:Undergraduate students between the ages of 18 and 25 and of various academic majors at a state university will participate in the experiment. Design and Experimental Task*single blind, single factor two-group design.Prior to the experiment:The researcher will videotape a female speaker and a male speaker telling truths and lies, and each speaker-will be prompted with the same five questions, one at a time, and informed whether they are to tell the true or lie. During the experiment, participants will:*be presented with a questionnaire that contains demographic-related questions, watch video of the speakers telling truths and lies, indicate if they thought each statement made by each speaker was a truth or a lie, rate the overall trustworthiness of each speaker, and go through debriefing

Background*Lying is common, highly complex/easier to conceal than it is to detect.*Little research has been conducted to identify a relationship between biological sex and deception.* The variable of sex has been thrown out or disregarded as having any effect on the dependent variable in some cases*Exploring this dimension of deception could open up more questions to scholars about sex differences in communication: Do men give more leakage cues? Are women better liars?

Literature ReviewMy Focus:

* Why people lie * Cues of deception

* Identifying deception in men and women

Expected ResultsTest of Hypothesis* The researcher expects to see a relationship between participants’ sex and their ability to identify how of-ten the speaker of the opposite sex lies. - Can the female participants determine when the male speakers lies with better accuracy than the male participants can determine when the female speaker lies? - Or will the inverse be supported? Potential Ancillary Findings*The researcher also expects to see if the participants’ sex affects how trustworthy they think the female and male speakers are.