[In the Hall of the Mountain King plays]
>>Dr. Dunbar: Today's lesson is about the verbal cues to deception, the things that
we can hear in order to detect deception, and they're more difficult to detect because
we're not used to listening for verbal cues. We're very much visually oriented, and so
this is a way to detect deception without using visual cues. There are three things
I want you to remember about the videos. One is that they're actors, so they're well trained
and they're good at improvising. Second is that these are sanctioned lies, which means
they lied because I told them to lie, but they're unscripted. They didn't know what
these questions were in advance. The third thing is that these are a conversation, not
really an interrogation. While some of the tips that I'm going to give you might apply
to interrogations, you shouldn't really think of these videos as interrogations. So let's
look at our first liar.
[In the Hall of the Mountain King plays]
>>Interviewer: Zach, it's really great to have you here today. I'm glad you could join
us. We're going to go ahead and just have a very casual conversation. I'm just going
to ask you an assortment of questions and just have you respond.
>>Zach: Okay.
>>Interviewer: So first off, we're just going to jump right in. What is the worst job you've
ever had, and why did you dislike it?
>>Zach: Um, the worst job that I've ever had was working at a--
>>Dr. Dunbar: Right there he repeats the question, and he actually does this for all five questions.
The question is "What's the worst job you've ever had?" And he says, "Uhhh, the worst job
I've ever had." So there's a filled pause, and then there's also the repetition of the
question back.
>>Interviewer: What would you do if your boss gave you credit for someone else's work?
>>Zach: If my boss gave me credit for someone else's work--
>>Dr. Dunbar: Again, he repeats the question.
>>Zach: --I might just let it be. I mean, if I'm getting credit for someone else's work,
maybe it'll help me grow to a place I need to be.
>>Dr. Dunbar: He used a couple of what we call qualifiers. The word "might," the word
"maybe," these are signs of uncertainty, and those can be signs of deception as well. So
if you listen for particular words, hesitations and qualifiers tend to be more associated
with deception than with truth. Another thing I want you to look for is whether or not the
person is really answering the question. Here's the question:
>>Interviewer: So you're saying it's completely circumstantial?
>>Zach: I'm not saying it's most moral thing to do, or it's moral, but um, yeah, maybe
I would, maybe I would take the credit.
>>Dr. Dunbar: Question is: "Is it circumstantial?" and the answer is "It's not the moral thing
to do, but I would take the credit." That doesn't really answer the question about whether
or not it's circumstantial. He corrects himself by mispronouncing the word "moral," but I'm
not too worried about that. What I'm worried about is the fact that he doesn't actually
answer the question about it being circumstantial.
[In the Hall of the Mountain King plays]
>>Dr. Dunbar: This is liar number two, and this time what I want you to listen for is
how short her answers are. She doesn't elaborate, doesn't give very much detail, and she gives
very quick answers to the questions.
>>Interviewer: Aside from being extremely specific, what would you say your other greatest
strengths are?
>>Kasey: [laughs] Um, probably um, hmm. I would have to say, let's go--
>>Interviewer: What would other people say about you?
>>Kasey: Um--
>>Interviewer: They know Kasey, what is the one thing they're going to say?
>>Kasey: --I'm pretty athletic.
>>Interviewer: Great.
>>Dr. Dunbar: It takes her a long time to answer a one-word answer. So she fills her
pause, she's thinking, she's kind of laughing. The interviewer tries to help her out by giving
her the question in a different format, and then she says one word: athletic. That's a
very short answer given how much effort she put into coming up with it. So that might
be a cue that she's lying as well.
>>Interviewer: Um, what do you think you'll do today after this?
>>Kasey: Um, probably, uh, sleep.
>>Interviewer: Just go back home and sleep?
>>Kasey: Yeah.
>>Dr. Dunbar: There it is again, a long pause, she thought about it, and then she said, "Sleep."
One word answer. Notice she also said the word "probably," which is another one of those
qualifiers that we talked about earlier.
[In the Hall of the Mountain King plays]
>>Dr. Dunbar: This is liar number three, and you can see a lot of the same qualities in
him that we saw in some of the other ones. He gives very short answers with not very
much elaboration. Even when the interviewer asks him for more elaboration, he refuses.
He just doesn't want to give any more detail. Liars sometimes know that if they give any
more detail, then they will give themselves away by saying something that the other person
knows to be false. So they try to limit their details and put the emphasis back on the person
that's asking the questions.
>>Interviewer: And what would you do in the situation if your boss gave you credit for
someone else's work?
>>Dwayne: I'd just take it.
>>Interviewer: Really?
>>Dwayne: Yeah. Just take it.
>>Interviewer: Just simple as that?
>>Dr. Dunbar: So the interviewer prompts him, tries to get him to elaborate, tries to get
him to say more, and he just refuses. He doesn't want to say anything more than that. In some
of the research I've done with Dr. Burgoon we've found that liars tend to be more submissive,
that they tend to play kind of a down-played role, and let the interviewer do most of the
talking and try to get them—get the question back on them. And they do that by keeping
their answers short, and sometimes they'll ask a follow-up question in return, although
that's not what Dwayne does in this case.
[In the Hall of the Mountain King plays]
>>Dr. Dunbar: This is liar number four, and she is the one that everybody thought was
very difficult to detect. In fact, only 33 percent of you thought that she was a liar.
But she gives a few verbal cues off, a lot of hesitations and filled pauses, that might
be a sign that she's lying. I'll give you an example.
>>Kimberly: Okay, uhm. Well, here I am.
>>Dr. Dunbar: Just "okay, uhm." She doesn't repeat back the question like some of the
other liars do, but she still needs a little bit of time to think of her answer. Here's
where she's being asked the question about her personal strengths. She needs a little
bit of time to think about it because she has to think about what her real strengths
are and then think of something that's not one of her real strengths.
>>Kimberly: --generous person.
>>Interviewer: Very giving?
>>Kimberly: Mmhm.
>>Dr. Dunbar: So a few hesitations there. She has to think about it. She fills her pauses,
not just with uhms, but also with words, and so she's using her time to think about what
her answer's going to be.
[In the Hall of the Mountain King plays]
>>Dr. Dunbar: So this is number five, and he uses the word "I guess" a lot. And he says,
"I guess I would take it," "I guess I would do this," and so the "I guess" is a sign of
uncertainty, that he's not really sure what his real answer would be.
>>Interviewer: Now what would you do if your boss gave you credit for someone else's work?
>>Marco: Uh, I guess I would--I don't know, uh, take it I guess. I guess I, I mean, it
depends on who it is actually. That's probably--
>>Interviewer: No qualms?
>>Marco: No, I don't think so.