Conversing with a devil's advocate: Interpersonal coordination in deception and disagreement

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Behavioral Science
• Communication Studies

Background:

• Interpersonal coordination is crucial for social interaction.
• Understanding deception dynamics requires examining multimodal communication.
• Previous research often overlooks the adaptive nature of coordination in deception.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate dynamical patterns of interpersonal coordination in deceptive conversations.
• To explore how multimodal behaviors (head movements, speech rate) signal deception.
• To examine the adaptive role of coordination in strategic deception.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a "devil's advocate" paradigm to elicit deception and truth.
• Measured head movement coordination using windowed lagged cross correlation (WLCC).
• Analyzed speech rate dependencies with cross recurrence quantification analysis (CRQA).

Main Results:

• Deceptive conversations exhibited more structured speech rate.
• Higher head movement coordination was observed during deception.
• A peak in head movement coordination occurred in deceptive disagreement conversations.

Conclusions:

• Interpersonal coordination is a flexible signal that adapts to conversational demands.
• Coordination patterns can strategically serve goals associated with deception.
• Findings support an adaptive account of interpersonal coordination in deceptive interactions.