Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-m8s7h Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-17T18:05:57.771Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Lying and perception of lies by bilingual speakers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2019

Nora Kreyßig  and
Agnieszka Ewa Krautz
Nora Kreyßig
Affiliation:
University of Mannheim
Agnieszka Ewa Krautz*
Affiliation:
University of Mannheim
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: a.krautz@uni-mannheim.de
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Multiple studies on bilingualism and emotions have demonstrated that a native language carries greater emotional valence than the second language. This distinction appears to have consequences for other types of behavior, including lying. As bilingual lying has not been explored extensively, the current study investigated the psychophysiological differences between German (native language) and English (second language) in the lying process as well as in the perception of lies. The skin conductance responses of 26 bilinguals were measured during reading aloud true and false statements and listening to recorded correct and wrong assertions. The analysis revealed a lie effect, that is, statistically significant differences between valid and fictitious sentences. In addition, the values in German were higher compared to those in English, in accordance with the blunted emotional response account (Caldwell-Harris & Aycicegi-Dinn, 2009). Finally, the skin conductance responses were lower in the listening condition in comparison to the reading aloud. The results, however, are treated with caution given the fact that skin conductance monitoring does not allow assigning heightened reactivity of the skin to one exclusive cause. The responses may have been equally induced by the content of the statements, which prompted positive or negative associations in the participants’ minds or by the specific task requirements.

Keywords

bilingual emotionalityfake newslying behaviorskin conductance
Type
Original Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 40 , Issue 5 , September 2019 , pp. 1313 - 1329
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31, 211–236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Al-Simadi, F. A. (2000). Jordanian students’ beliefs about nonverbal behavior associated with deception in Jordan. Social Behavior and Personality, 28, 437–442.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bond, C. F., Omar, A., Mahmoud, A., & Bonser, R. N. (1990). Lie detection across cultures. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 14, 189–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldwell-Harris, C. L., & Aycicegi-Dinn, A. (2009). Emotion and lying in a non- native language. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 71, 193–204.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Caldwell-Harris, C. L., Sanchez, N., & Nayak, N. (2014). When early and late bilinguals lie: Skin conductance responses during a deception task. Boston University Psycholinguistics Laboratory Working Papers. Boston: Boston University.Google Scholar
Costa, A., Foucart, A., Hayakawa, S., Aparici, M., Apesteguia, J., Heafner, J., & Keysar, B. (2014). Your morals depend on language. PLOS ONE, 9, e94842.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Critchley, H. D. (2002). Electrodermal responses: What happens in the brain? Neuroscientist, 8, 132–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dawson, M. E., Schell, A. M., & Filion, D. L. (2000). The electrodermal system. In Cacioppo, J. T., Tassinary, L. G., & Berntson, G. G. (Eds.), Handbook of psychophysiology (2nd ed., pp. 200–223). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dewaele, J. M. (2008). The emotional weight of I love you in multilinguals’ languages. Journal of Pragmatics, 40, 1753–1780.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dewaele, J. M. (2010). Christ fucking shit merde! Language preferences for swearing among maximally proficient multilinguals. Sociolinguistic Studies, 4, 595–614.Google Scholar
Dewaele, J.-M. (2011). The differences in self-reported use and perception of the L1 and L2 of maximally proficient bi- and multilinguals: A quantitative and qualitative investigation. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 208, 25–51.Google Scholar
Dewaele, J.-M. (2017). “Cunt”: On the perception and handling of verbal dynamite by L1 and LX users of English. Multilingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication, 37, 53–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dewaele, J. M., & Salomidou, L. (2017). Loving a partner in a foreign language. Journal of Pragmatics, 108, 116–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duñabeitia, J. A., & Costa, A. (2015). Lying in a native and foreign language. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 22, 1124–1129.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hancock, J. T., Thom-Santelli, J., & Ritchie, T. (2004). Deception and design: The impact of communication technology on lying behavior. Paper delivered at the 2004 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Vienna, Austria, April 24–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, C. L. (2004). Bilingual speakers in the lab: Psychophysiological measures of emotional reactivity. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 25, 223–247.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, C. L., Aycicegi, A., & Gleason, J. B. (2003). Taboo words and reprimands elicit greater autonomic reactivity in a first language than in a second language. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 561–579.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, C. L., Gleason, J. B., & Aycicegi, A. (2006). When is a first language more emotional? Psychophysiological evidence from bilingual speakers. In Pavlenko, A. (Ed.), Bilingual minds: Emotional experience, expression and representation (pp. 257–283). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kroll, J. F., & Stewart, E. (1994). Category interference in translation and picture naming: Evidence for asymmetric connections between bilingual memory representations. Journal of Memory and Language, 33, 149–174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larsen, S. F., Schrauf, R. W., Fromholt, P., & Rubin, D. C. (2002). Inner speech and bilingual autobiographical memory: A Polish-Danish cross-cultural study. Memory, 10, 45–54.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Li, P., Sepanski, S., & Zhao, X. (2006). Language history questionnaire: A web-based interface for bilingual research. Behavior Research Methods, 38, 202–210.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mehrabian, A. (1971). Nonverbal betrayal of feeling. Journal of Experimental Research in Personality, 5, 64–73.Google Scholar
Newman, M. L., Pennebaker, J. W., Berry, D. S., & Richards, J. M. (2003). Lying words: Predicting deception from linguistic styles. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 665–675.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Opitz, B., & Degner, J. (2012). Emotionality in a second language: It’s a matter of time. Neuropsychologia, 50, 1961–1967.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pavlenko, A. (2012). Affective processing in bilingual speakers: Disembodied cognition. International Journal of Psychology, 47, 405–428.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pavlenko, A. (2014). The bilingual mind: And what it tells us about language and thought. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Puntoni, S., de Langhe, B., & van Osselaer, S. M. (2009). Bilingualism and the emotional intensity of advertising language. Journal of Consumer Research, 35, 1012–1025.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vrij, A., Fisher, R., Mann, S., & Leal, S. (2006). Detecting deception by manipulating cognitive load. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10, 141–142.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed