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Evidence for the Pinocchio effect: Linguistic differences between lies, deception by omission, and truth

Evidence for the Pinocchio effect: Linguistic differences between lies, deception by omission, and truth. Lyn M. Van Swol & Michael T. Braun University of Wisconsin-Madison Deepak Malhotra Harvard Business School. Types of deception. Bald-faced lie Omission. Lie.

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Evidence for the Pinocchio effect: Linguistic differences between lies, deception by omission, and truth

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  1. Evidence for the Pinocchio effect: Linguistic differences between lies, deception by omission, and truth Lyn M. Van Swol & Michael T. Braun University of Wisconsin-Madison Deepak Malhotra Harvard Business School

  2. Types of deception • Bald-faced lie • Omission

  3. Lie • A: Um, I’m giving you a dollar fifty. • R: You’re giving me a dollar fifty. How much did they give you? • A: Three dollars. • R: You’re lying. You know why? • A: Why? • R: Because I heard her say she gave you five bucks. • A: Well, that’s part of her experiment, she’s trying to fuck with you. Probably shouldn’t say that with the camera..whatever.

  4. Omission • A: Okay, so I’m allocating 10 dollars to you, so I don’t know if you want 10 dollars or not. • R: That’s fine. • A: I don’t know if you can deal with that. Okay, so how are you doing?

  5. Omission • A: I’m giving you ten. • R: Ten bucks? So they gave you 20? • A: Ten is more than 7.50. So I figured… • R: Yeah. The only thing I’m interested in is if they gave you thirty or not. • A: Only if what? • R: The only thing I’d have a problem with is if they gave you 30 or not. And I know you wouldn’t dick me over, so. • A: And of course, we’d all figure this out later. • R: What? • A: We could figure this all out later.

  6. Non-strategic linguistic cues • Pronoun use: first person and third person • Negative emotion words and suspicion • Swearing and suspicion • Higher cognitive load: concreteness, sentence complexity, type-token ratio, connectives

  7. Strategic linguistic cues • Word count • Pinocchio effect: greater words when reality cannot be verified/no concealment goals • Omission and reduced word count: concealment goal • Causation words

  8. Modified ultimatum game • Endowment amount • Roles: Allocator/Recipient • Recipient only has knowledge of range of values • Allocator allocates endowment between self and recipient • Recipient can accept or reject offer • If rejected, allocator gets nothing and recipient gets a default amount of 25% of endowment • Interactions videotaped and transcribed

  9. Method • 102 dyads • Given either $5/$30 endowment • LIWC: Linguistic Word Count Inquiry software

  10. Lies (n = 7) Omission (n = 26) Truth (n = 69) Note. * p < 0.05, ** p < .01 # Higher numbers indicate more concreteness.

  11. Lies (n = 7) Omission (n = 26) Truth (n = 69) Note. * p < 0.05, ** p < .01

  12. Role of suspicion Lies Omission Truth

  13. Multinomial logistic regression to predict offer type Deception Type = Lie Third person pronouns (%) B = 0.95* Number words (%) B = 0.45** Note. * p < .05, ** p < .01

  14. Conclusions • Importance of context with word count • Without verifiable reality: Pinocchio effect • With concealment goal: reduced word count • Replicated past research with third person pronouns • Tentative results about profanity • Negative emotion words and suspicion

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