The Effect of Synchrony of Happiness on Facial Expression of Negative Emotion When Lying

Abstract

Meta-analyses have not shown emotions to be significant predictors of deception. Criticisms of this conclusion argued that individuals must be engaged with each other in higher stake situations for such emotions to manifest, and that these emotions must be evaluated in their verbal context (Frank and Svetieva in J Appl Res Memory Cognit 1:131–133, 10.1016/j.jarmac.2012.04.006, 2012). This study examined behavioral synchrony as a marker of engagement in higher stakes truthful and deceptive interactions, and then compared the differences in facial expressions of fear, contempt, disgust, anger, and sadness not consistent with the verbal content. Forty-eight pairs of participants were randomly assigned to interviewer and interviewee, and the interviewee was assigned to steal either a watch or a ring and to lie about the item they stole, and tell the truth about the other, under conditions of higher stakes of up to $30 rewards for successful deception, and $0 plus having to write a 15-min essay for unsuccessful deception. The interviews were coded for expression of emotions using EMFACS (Friesen and Ekman in EMFACS-7; emotional facial action coding system, 1984). Synchrony was demonstrated by the pairs of participants expressing overlapping instances of happiness (AU6 + 12). A 3 (low, moderate, high synchrony) × 2 (truth, lie) mixed-design ANOVA found that negative facial expressions of emotion were a significant predictor of deception, but only when they were not consistent with the verbal content, in the moderate and high synchrony conditions. This finding is consistent with data and theorizing that shows that with higher stakes, or with higher engagement, emotions can be a predictor of deception.