David Markowitz: A Context-Contingent Approach to Deception and Language

Duration: 18 mins 30 secs

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Created:	2015-09-28 17:48
Collection:	Decepticon 2015
Publisher:	University of Cambridge
Copyright:	Dr S. Van der Zee
Language:	eng (English)
Keywords:	Deception; Language; Context;


Abstract:	Across studies, the influence of deception on language has produced weak or null effect sizes for a variety of important psychological dimensions including first-person singular pronouns (e.g., ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘my’) and negative emotion terms (e.g., ‘hate’, ‘aggression’; Hauch, Blandón-Gitlin, Masip, & Sporer, 2014). In some cases, these linguistic features are amplified (e.g., negative emotion terms in political deceptions; Markowitz, Hancock, & Bazarova, 2011) or attenuated (e.g., “I” words in statements about abortion; Newman, Pennebaker, Berry, & Richards, 2003) in lies relative to truths. However, deception may also not affect language in other situations (e.g., a trivia game; Ali & Levine, 2008). Such inconsistent patterns indicate that deception involves more than just the intent to mislead. In fact, a recent meta-analysis evaluating linguistic cues for deception (Hauch et al., 2014) accounted for several moderator variables (e.g., the production mode; written, spoken, or typed text), which suggest that context may be important for understanding the relationship between deception and language. In this piece, we outline why it is problematic to treat the effect of deception on language as a universal phenomenon, and subsequently propose a context-contingent framework for deception. We offer that psychological dynamics (e.g., emotional and cognitive processes related to the deception), pragmatic goals (e.g., what the speaker is trying to accomplish by deceiving), and genre conventions (e.g., linguistic features of a discourse community that constrain a repertoire of speech) are three features of context that vary across deceptions and influence how deception affects language. We first organize this argument by suggesting what context means for communication independent of deception, and then consider how the aforementioned situational factors may influence the effect of deception on language.

Abstract:

Across studies, the influence of deception on language has produced weak or null effect sizes for a variety of important psychological dimensions including first-person singular pronouns (e.g., ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘my’) and negative emotion terms (e.g., ‘hate’, ‘aggression’; Hauch, Blandón-Gitlin, Masip, & Sporer, 2014). In some cases, these linguistic features are amplified (e.g., negative emotion terms in political deceptions; Markowitz, Hancock, & Bazarova, 2011) or attenuated (e.g., “I” words in statements about abortion; Newman, Pennebaker, Berry, & Richards, 2003) in lies relative to truths. However, deception may also not affect language in other situations (e.g., a trivia game; Ali & Levine, 2008). Such inconsistent patterns indicate that deception involves more than just the intent to mislead. In fact, a recent meta-analysis evaluating linguistic cues for deception (Hauch et al., 2014) accounted for several moderator variables (e.g., the production mode; written, spoken, or typed text), which suggest that context may be important for understanding the relationship between deception and language. In this piece, we outline why it is problematic to treat the effect of deception on language as a universal phenomenon, and subsequently propose a context-contingent framework for deception. We offer that psychological dynamics (e.g., emotional and cognitive processes related to the deception), pragmatic goals (e.g., what the speaker is trying to accomplish by deceiving), and genre conventions (e.g., linguistic features of a discourse community that constrain a repertoire of speech) are three features of context that vary across deceptions and influence how deception affects language. We first organize this argument by suggesting what context means for communication independent of deception, and then consider how the aforementioned situational factors may influence the effect of deception on language.

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