The behavioral correlates of sanctioned and unsanctioned deceptive communication

Ninety-three students were randomly assigned to one of three veracity conditions: (1) truthful, (2) unsanctioned-deceptive, or (3) sanctioned-deceptive. Participants in the truthful condition were honest when reporting strategies used when attempting to unscramble a series of anagrams. Students in the sanctioned-deceptive and unsanctioned-deceptive condition were implicated to cheat (by looking at the answers) on the anagram task by a research confederate. Students in the sanctioned condition were asked by an experimenter to conceal their cheating by lying to the interviewer about their "high score" on the anagram task whereas students in the unsanctioned condition were not given any instructions about how to answer the interviewer's questions regarding their anagram-solving strategies. All interviews were videotaped and verbal and nonverbal behaviors were analyzed by four student-coders. Results indicated that unsanctioned deceivers, when compared to sanctioned deceivers, made fewer speech errors and speech hesitations, gazed less at their targets, and used fewer other references.