ABSTRACT
In this preregistered experiment, we address an understudied question in the deception and language literature: What is the impact of context on false and truthful language patterns? Drawing on two theories, Truth-Default Theory and the Contextual Organization of Language and Deception model, we instructed participants (N = 639) to lie, tell the truth, or write within a genre without explicit lying or truth-telling instructions across different topics (e.g. their friends, attitudes on abortion). The results successfully replicate several cue-based models for self-references and negative affect, such as the Newman Pennebaker model of deception. Participants without lying or truth-telling instructions, but who wrote within genre conventions, showed markedly similar patterns to truth-tellers, though indicators of analytic thinking, adjectives, and auxiliary verbs were distinct. The data were also evaluated with a topic modeling approach and suggest that the abortion process was construed negatively when people lied about the topic. Truth-tellers construed abortion in objective terms and genre-related speech highlighted key role-players (e.g. the government, men, women, baby). We discuss how these data advance deception and language theory.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCID
David M. Markowitz http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7159-7014