Abstract
To teach the importance of deception in everyday social life, an in-class activity called the Speed Lying Task was given in an introductory social psychology class. In class, two major research findings were replicated: Individuals detected deception at levels no better than expected by chance and lie detection confidence was unrelated to lie detection accuracy. Using a pretest–posttest design, the activity led to significant increases in deception knowledge, and the activity was seen as helpful, engaging, and interesting to the students. This study supports using students as both research subjects and research consumers in the classroom to teach classical concepts in social psychology.
Although lecturing remains the standard mode of instruction in the college classroom, there is much evidence that other approaches are more successful at achieving long-term retention of information or applying knowledge to real-world situations (e.g., cooperative learning; Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 1998). The present article discusses an in-class activity designed to engage students in which the students first provide the data as research participants and then learn from the presentation of the data as research consumers in the classroom. Specifically, a “Speed Lying Task” was developed to teach the significance of deception in our daily lives.
Lying is part of everyday social life. People not only lie to cast themselves in a more favorable light but also to protect the feelings of others. Despite some individuals feeling that they are skilled in lie detection (i.e., “I know when someone is lying to me”), a recent meta-analysis shows an average lie detection rate of 54%, compared to the 50% expected by chance (Bond & DePaulo, 2006). Research suggests that individuals detect lies at a near chance rate and that there is remarkably little individual variation in the ability to detect lies (Bond & DePaulo, 2008). Further, there does not appear to be a relationship between accurately detecting deception and confidence in one’s judgments (DePaulo, Charlton, Cooper, Lindsay, & Muhlenbruck, 1997).
To demonstrate the relationship (or lack thereof) between one’s beliefs that they are “good” at detecting lies and their actual ability to detect lies, students participated in a “Speed Lying Task.” As a variant of the common icebreaker “Two Truths and a Lie,” students exchanged one lie and one truth about themselves face-to-face to one fellow student at a time. To allow each student the opportunity to detect/tell lies several times, the class was divided in half with one half of the class sitting stationary, and the other half of the class rotating from student to student in a manner similar to “speed dating.” Each student told the student across from them one lie and one truth.
In an introductory social psychology class, I attempted to replicate two findings from the literature in the classroom, and effectively teach important concepts of deception (e.g., abilities to detect deception, nonverbal cues of deception). First, replicating previous research, it was expected that the “lie detection rate” would not be appreciably different from that which would be expected by chance (i.e., 50% accuracy). Second, one’s own perception of “how good” they are at detecting lies was not expected to be significantly correlated with their actual ability at detecting lies. Finally, it was expected that knowledge of the deception concepts above would improve significantly from pretest to posttest.
Method
Participants
Participants were students enrolled in one undergraduate social psychology course in spring 2012 taught by the author. Of the 41 students enrolled in the class, 32 students were in attendance for the in-class activity and they all opted to participate in the study after reviewing the consent document.
Materials and Procedure
In the second week of the course (fourth class day), participants completed a 35-item multiple-choice “pretest.” From this exam, four multiple choice items were used to assess prior knowledge of deception (e.g., “Many times, attempts at deception are thwarted because of ________ facial expressions: a. irrepressible, b. basic channel, c. stereotypical, d. irrelevant, e. stylized”). After the pretest, the author reviewed the consent document with the students emphasizing the voluntary nature of participating in the study. In the third week of the course (eighth class day) during which “Social Perception” was the topic (Baron & Branscombe, 2012), students completed the “Speed Lying Task.”
Students were given a two-page handout. On the first page (Part A), they selected “true” or “false” for each statement as it applied to them from a list of 20 statements (e.g., “Most people call me by a nickname,” “I never dyed my hair”). Then, they completed 3 items on how good they believe they are at detecting lies. Two items were on Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree; e.g., “I feel that I am very good at knowing when someone is lying,” “I can often tell when someone is lying just by the way that they say something”) and 1 item was on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (much worse than most) to 5 (much better than most; i.e., “How good are you at detecting lies?”). These 3 items were averaged to create a score reflective of confidence at detecting lies (α = .78).
Then, on the second page of the handout (Part B), students were then instructed to pick one truth and one lie to tell their peers based on the 20 statements from Part A. Based on the handout that each student read to themselves privately, each student was ostensibly assigned to the “truth first condition” such that they were asked to tell the truth first, which allowed for quick data entry. On the handout, participants were instructed to simply record whether they believed the lie was told first (write “1”) or second (write “2”). Then, students began “Speed Lying,” rotating every 30–60 s until everyone had lied to 10 other students.
After completing the task, an assistant (second author) quickly tallied the students’ responses while the instructor (first author) reviewed basic information regarding deception. Specifically, the author initiated a discussion on what strategies individuals use in their daily lives to detect deception. As individuals provided their personal examples, the instructor highlighted both verbal and nonverbal cues, and discussed microexpressions, interchannel discrepancies, eye contact, and exaggerated facial expressions as potential indications of lying (Baron & Branscombe, 2012). It was also discussed that there are not any “sure tells” of deception. Then, the author showed and explained the “Lie Detection Rates” results discussed below, gave the students the posttest quiz followed by the ratings of the activity.
Results
Lie Detection Rates
To examine whether students were able to detect lies at a rate greater than expected by chance (i.e., >5 of the 10 correct), a one-sample t-test was conducted. The average accuracy of students was 47.42% (M = 4.74, SD = 1.44), which was not significantly different from what would be expected by chance, t(30) = −1.00, p = .325, d = −.18. In addition, participants’ self-reported ability to detect lies was not significantly correlated with their actual ability to detect lies during the Speed Lying Task, r(30) = .288, p = .123.
Teaching Effectiveness
To examine whether knowledge significantly increased from pretest to posttest, a dependent-sample t-test was conducted. The increase in knowledge between pretest (M = 2.12, SD = .666) and posttest (M = 2.72, SD = .792) was statistically significant, t(24) = 3.67, p = .001, d = .741, suggesting that the in-class activity was successful in teaching about deception. Three items on 10-point scales ranging from 1 (not at all) to 10 (extremely) were collected anonymously from 32 participants. These students tended to view the activity as helpful (M = 7.31, SD = 1.67), interesting (M = 8.72, SD = 1.08), and engaging (M = 8.69, SD = 1.33) as all scores were significantly higher than the midpoint (ps < .001).
Discussion
The present study describes an in-class presentation designed to teach about deception by getting students to actively engage first as research subjects in the classroom, then as consumers of research as the results were explained. First, two major research findings were replicated in the classroom: (1) individuals do not detect lies at a rate appreciably greater than that expected by guessing (i.e., chance, Bond & DePaulo, 2006, 2008) and (2) confidence in ability to detect lies is unrelated to accuracy (DePaulo et al., 1997). After participating in the activity, a class discussion ensued in which students discussed the strategies they used for detecting deception, and the instructor highlighted the signs of deception. Importantly, the activity was effective at teaching about deception, and participants found the activity to be helpful, engaging, and interesting.
The most notable limitation of the present study is that there was no control group. Given that the activity involved engaging in an activity as a research subject, discussing personal experiences with deception, and explaining how the results of the in-class activity relate to previous research on deception, one cannot be sure which components are necessary to result in student engagement and learning. Also, it took approximately 10 min to explain how students would rotate and report on each others’ true/false statements, suggesting that the directions for this activity could be clearer. It took approximately 10 min to tally students’ responses; having an assistant complete this task while the instructor engaged the students in a discussion allowed for an efficient use of class time. Having syntax files ready to conduct the analyses quickly also allowed the instructor to finish the activity in a timely manner.
Speed Lying offers an engaging way to get students to actively participate by providing them the opportunity to not only be subjects of the research (i.e., research participants) but also consumers of the research. Although the engaging, “speed dating” format of this activity worked well in the smaller classroom, we imagine that small modification would allow the activity to work with larger class sizes. For example, one could easily reduce the number of “lie dates,” could have someone lie to the person to their left and to their right if in a large auditorium, and have multiple coders to tally the responses quickly. Although we collected and presented the data within the same 50-min class period, one could certainly present the results in a separate class period if more time is needed to tally the responses. Not only was this in-class activity engaging and informative to the students, it also showed the lack of relationship between perceptions of lie detection and actual abilities to detect lies.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.