Cognición, emoción y mentira: implicaciones para detectar el engaño

Recently, the dearth of evidence supporting nonverbal-emotional approach to lie detection has favored the development of cognitive orientation. According to cognitive orientation, lying is cognitively more complex than truth telling, such that an artificial increase of cognitive difficulty during an interview will lead liars to show indicators of cognitive overload. In this paper we argue that lying is not always more cognitively difficult than telling the truth. Automatically inferring deception from the observation of cognitive load indicators may lead to erroneous judgments. Practitioners must know how memory and the human cognitive system work, so they can understand the actual meaning of cognitive load indicators. Scientists should develop cognitive models of deception to guide their research, and should base their research hypotheses on specific cognitive mechanisms and processes. Finally, because emotions influence cognition, the role of emotions in lie detection cannot be neglected.