Can You Spot False Remorse?
Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011
Sometimes the core of a cognitive design challenge rests on being able to detect deception. People lie, fake emotions, bluff, fib, tell partial truths and otherwise deceive in a wide variety of circumstances. Being able to detect such deceptions reliably can be important at the office as well as at home. If nothing else it builds up your emotional intelligence. So I am always on the look out for scientific studies that zero in on the behavioral tells and give-away cognitive states of deception.
For example, two Canadian universities report on research in Law and Human Behavior that reveals for the first time insights into the behavioral cues for false remorse.
Those that fake remorse, or feeling sorry for what they have done, seem to:
1. exhibit a greater range of emotional states over a given period of time than those that are sorry
2. transition directly from negative emotions to positive emotions bypassing the neural emotional states that normally come between if you are truly sorry
3. have relatively higher rate of speech interruptions
These are clear tells that we can learn to detect. Not surprising given the journal’s focus, most of the applications mentioned focus on law enforcement including forensic psychologist or judges attempting to determine remorse during sentencing. It is easy to imagine other applications, for example a manager or HR professionals involved in the employee disciplinary process.
Interested to hear from readers about how they detect remorse or other forms of deception. How can disception detection be used in products, services or workplace improvements?
