The Impact of Model Statements on Verbal Differences between Truth and Lies when using a Comparable Truthful Baseline

DOI

Baselining is a deception detection technique that compares a statement of interest to a baseline. This study focused on verbal baselining: it looks at differences in detailedness between the baseline and the statement of interest as a cue to deception. Specifically, in two experiments, we investigated whether truth/lie discrimination improved when combining verbal baselining with a model statement—an example of a truthful account unrelated to the event. Participants watched two crime scenarios and provided a statement for each; the first statement, always truthful, served as a truthful baseline. Depending on the condition, participants either lied or told the truth about the second scenario, generating the statement of interest. Half of the participants were also presented with a model statement before providing their statements. Experiment 1 involved written statements, while Experiment 2 involved spoken statements. Whereas Experiment 1 supported the effectiveness of using a model statement and a truthful baseline independently, neither experiment showed that combining the two further improved truth/lie discrimination. These findings highlight the challenges of lie detection and suggest the need for more research to refine truth/lie discrimination.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.34894/GI4MVT
Metadata Access https://dataverse.nl/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=doi:10.34894/GI4MVT
Provenance
Creator Glynis, Bogaard ORCID logo; Broers, Nick J. ORCID logo; Meijer, Ewout H. ORCID logo
Publisher DataverseNL
Contributor faculty data manager FPN; Bogaard, Glynis
Publication Year 2025
Rights info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess
OpenAccess false
Contact faculty data manager FPN (Maastricht University); Bogaard, Glynis (Maastricht University)
Representation
Resource Type Experimental data; Dataset
Format application/x-spss-sav
Size 19801; 15931
Version 1.0
Discipline Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Aquaculture; Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Aquaculture and Veterinary Medicine; Life Sciences; Social Sciences; Social and Behavioural Sciences; Soil Sciences