Physically scarce (vs. enriched) environments decrease the ability to tell lies successfully

The successful detection of deception is of critical importance to adaptive social relationships and organizations, and perhaps even national security. However, research in forensic, legal, and social psychology demonstrates that people are generally very successful deceivers. The goal of the current research was to test an intervention with the potential to decrease the likelihood of successful deception. We applied findings in the architectural, engineering, and environmental sciences that has demonstrated that enriched environments (vs. scarce ones) promote the experience of comfort, positive emotion, feelings of power and control, and increase productivity. We hypothesized that sparse, impoverished, scarcely endowed environments (vs. enriched ones) would decrease the ability to lie successfully by making liars feel uncomfortable and powerless. Study 1 examined archival footage of an international sample of criminal suspects (N = 59), including innocent relatives (n = 33) and convicted murderers (n = 26) emotionally pleading to the public for the return of a missing person. Liars in scarce environments (vs. enriched) were significantly more likely to reveal their lies through behavioral cues to deception. Study 2 (N = 79) demonstrated that the discomfort and subsequent powerlessness caused by scarce (vs. enriched) environments lead people to reveal behavioral cues to deception. Liars in scarce environments also experienced greater neuroendocrine stress reactivity and were more accurately detected by a sample of 66 naïve observers (Study 3). Taken together, data suggest that scarce environments increase difficulty, and decrease success, of deception. Further, we make available videotaped stimuli of Study 2 liars and truth-tellers.