Abstract

Intended Method

Background

Expected Results

A study will be conducted on undergraduate students at a state university in Pennsylvania to investigate a possible re-lationship between sex and the ability to identify liars of the opposite sex. The experiment will require the participants to watch a video of two speakers (one male, one female) being asked a series of questions. The speakers will be instructed to either tell the truth or lie after being asked each question, and it will be the duty of the participants to identify whether they thought each statement was truthful or a lie. The partic-ipants will also be asked to indicate how honest they thought the overall statements of the speakers were using a Likert-type scale in hopes of discovering ancillary findings.

Research 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. * 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. * go through debriefing.

* Researchers have discovered that lying is common, highly com-plex, and often times easier to conceal than it is to detect.* Little research has been conducted to identify a relationship be-tween biological sex and deception.* In several experimental inquiries, the variable of sex has been thrown out or disregarded as having any effect on the dependent variable being explored for reasons unknown.* Exploring this dimension of deception could open up more ques-tions to scholars about sex differences: Do men typically reveal more leakage cues than women do? Are women better liars than men?* The findings of one study may lead to more compelling research to further draw communicative differences between the sexes.

Laura Hancock

Literature Review Literature ReviewWhy Do People Lie? * People want to refrain from exposing their true selves, save face, or project a positive image of themselves (Granhag, Porter, & Vrij, 2010).

* It enables people to hide or flee from the truths that make them uncom-fortable, hurt their image, or hurt oth-ers (Kupfer, 1982).

* People sometimes experience role conflicts that may force them to lie(Grover, 1993).

* “White lies” and altruistic lies, whose intentions are to spare the self-esteem of others, to benefit others, or to prohibit harm, are seen as being more ethical (Perkin &Turiel, 2007; Peterson, Peterson, & Seeto, 1983).

Cues of Deception * There is a wide variety of verbal and nonverbal cues that may relate to deception in a speaker, but behavioral differences between liars and those who tell the truth are minute (Granhag et al., 2010).

* There are differences in the ver-bal and nonverbal leakage cues of naive and able liars. * It is important to recognize that there are differences between cues of anxiety and cues of deception (Connors, Da-vis, Markus, Vorus, & Walters, 2005 p. 685).

Identifying Deception in Men and Women * Many studies disregard sex as being an important variable because it is “insignificant”. * One study explored the differ-ent motivations for lying between men and women. * Women lie to promote intima-cy, while men lie about their abili-ties to amplify their personal char-acteristics. * Do men and women differ on a neural basis when lying? Yes! * Typically, men display signifi-cantly higher levels of brain acti-vation in certain areas when lying about personal information. * Does this mean men to give off more leakage cues when lying? * Could women then be better lie detectors than men? * This study will set out to in-vestigate the general relationship between males and females and their ability to pick up cues of de-ception in speakers of the opposite sex. (Baron, Falkiewicz, Grabowskia, Jednorog, Marchewka, Szatkowskal & Szeskzkoski, 2012).

Test of Hypothesis * The researcher expects to see a relationship between participants’ sex and their ability to identify how often the speaker of the opposite sex lies. - Can the female participants determine when the male speaker lies with better accuracy than the male partici- pants can determine when the female speaker lies? - 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.

Sex Differences in the Identification of Liars