3. Body Language

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this lecture, we think about the role of body language in lie detection, focusing in particular on: (i) Zuckerman’s multifactorial model of deception, made up of the emotional, cognitive effort, and attempted behavioural control approaches; (ii) an exploration of the emotional approach to lie detection; (iii) a review of the factors within guilt, fear and delight, which form the emotions in the emotional approach to detecting deception; (iv) some key problems with the emotional approach being its subjectivity and the affiliation of its factors with nervousness; (v) the cognitive effort approach, which is based in the idea that lying is more mentally taxing than telling the truth, requiring liars to put more effort into conversations; (vi) the attempted behavioural control approach, wherein liars try to express behaviours which indicate that they are telling the truth and avoid expressing behaviours which they believe may indicate that they are lying; (vii) some key issues with the attempted behavioural control approach, including that certain people find it generally easier to lie; (viii) differentiating complete fabrication and concealing one piece of information; (ix) some key research which has demonstrated the weakness of the cues which are used by these models to detect deception.

Course

In this course, Dr Cody Porter (University of the West of England) explores investigative interviewing and lie detection. In the first lecture, we think about methods of investigative interviewing, including the two main types and four dimensions of each. In the second lecture, we think about historical approaches to lie detection, from ancient practices to the modern polygraph. In the third lecture, we think about how body language can be used to detect deception. Next, we think about the cognitive approach to lie detection. In the fifth lecture, we think about how best to approach detecting deception. In the sixth and final lecture, we review the ‘investigator’s toolkit’ of strategies to detect deception.

Lecturer

Dr Cody Porter is a senior lecturer in social psychology in the department of Health and Social Sciences at the University of the West of England. Dr Porter’s research interests are in information elicitation, lie detection and offending behaviour. Some of Dr Porter’s recent publications include ‘Implementing converged security risk management: Drivers, barriers, and facilitators’ (in press) and ‘Applying the asymmetric information management technique to insurance claims’ (2022).