A Cold Encounter: The Effects of Aversive Stimulation on Verbal and Nonverbal Leakage Cues to Deception

Abstract

Between 1963 and 2009, U.S. government interrogators were trained to use invasive, coercive tactics designed to increase a state of regression in their interrogatees. Although the ethical deplorability of these “enhanced interrogation methods” should be enough to dissuade people from their use, the research surrounding their applicability does not account for potential obfuscation with the encoding of verbal, nonverbal, and physiological behavior. Specifically, research does not address how exposure to pain may produce similar facial expressions, physiological arousal responses, and verbal expressions as those commonly found in deceptive contexts. To address this concern, the following study used the cold pressor test to simulate a painful encounter while participants were instructed to tell the truth or lie. Results indicate that although there is a significant difference between truth and lies in specific facial action units and verbal expressiveness, the addition of pain clouds that relationship such that mean differences begin to diminish. It seems as though the use of pain as a coercive tactic affects the encoding of these behaviors in a way similar to the stress from a deception attempt.