Seeing is believing: Video quality and lie detection.

With the advent of new communication technologies, many previously face-to-face interactions are conducted through the use of videoconference technology. Artifacts caused by video compression and other technological constraints lead to the distortion of some behavioral cues. These cues, although not central to understanding, play an important role in subtle communication tasks such as the detection of deception in others. This dissertation consists of three studies designed to understand how spatial and temporal video degradation affect the judgment processes involved in lie detection. Experiment 1 explored the effects of a range of video distortions on the measurement of behavioral cues and the relationship of those cues to truthful and deceptive messages. In Experiments 2 and 3 participants attempted to make lie detection judgments of interviews presented in various video qualities. The results of these studies indicate that video quality does affect the visibility of certain behavioral cues and lie detection performance. The most surprising finding is that lie detection performance was significantly better in highly spatially degraded conditions than in moderately spatially degraded conditions. The relationship between lie detection accuracy and confidence is also examined.Ph.D.Cognitive psychologyPsychologySocial psychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/127756/2/3029350.pd