Media release
From: The Royal SocietyA Liar and a Copycat: Nonverbal Coordination Increases with Lie Difficulty
Nonverbal coordination is the tendency to imitate the behaviors of others. Coordination can take place both on a conscious and a more unconscious or automatic level. How much people coordinate with their interaction partner, depends on several factors, including liking and common goals. There is some evidence that the coordination occurrence is also affected by cognitive load. So far, this has only been demonstrated in isolated body part movement. A forensically relevant setting that is strongly associated with increased cognitive load is deception. Lying, especially when fabricating accounts, can be more cognitively demanding than truth telling. In two studies, we demonstrate that interactional nonverbal coordination increases under the cognitive load of lying. Nonverbal coordination is an especially interesting cue to deceit because its occurrence relies on automatic processes and is therefore more difficult to deliberately control. Our findings complement current deception research into the liar’s nonverbal behavior by explicitly considering the interaction with the interviewer. Our findings extent the current literature on increased reliance on automated processes by demonstrating that nonverbal coordination can be such an automated process that is affected by increased cognitive load. The use of motion capture technology provides a novel, objective and efficient means of measurement.
