Processing facial emotion, especially mismatches between facial and verbal messages, is believed to be important in the detection of deception. For example, emotional leakage may accompany lying. Individuals with superior emotion perception abilities may then be more adept in detecting deception by identifying mismatch between facial and verbal messages. Two personal factors that may predict such abilities are female gender and high emotional intelligence (EI). However, evidence on the role of gender and EI in detection of deception is mixed. A key issue is that the facial processing skills required to detect deception may not be the same as those required to identify facial emotion. To test this possibility, we developed a novel facial processing task, the FDT (Face Decoding Test) that requires detection of inconsistencies between facial and verbal cues to emotion. We hypothesized that gender and ability EI would be related to performance when cues were inconsistent. We also hypothesized that gender effects would be mediated by EI, because women tend to score as more emotionally intelligent on ability tests. Data were collected from 210 participants. Analyses of the FDT suggested that EI was correlated with superior face decoding in all conditions. We also confirmed the expected gender difference, the superiority of high EI individuals, and the mediation hypothesis. Also, EI was more strongly associated with facial decoding performance in women than in men, implying there may be gender differences in strategies for processing affective cues. It is concluded that integration of emotional and cognitive cues may be a core attribute of EI that contributes to the detection of deception.

Funding: Primary support for this work was provided by Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Educations N N106 352540 grant. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. No additional external funding was received for this study.

Introduction

Lying and deception are highly pervasive [1]. DePaulo et al.'s [2] classic diary study suggested that almost everybody lies at least once a week, and about 30% of lies regard feelings. People tell lies to pretend that they feel better than they do or to signal agreement with their partners. For successful deception, the verbal message should be coherent with nonverbal signals. Lewis [3] argues that emotional deception is part of ‘normal’ socialization (e.g., parents encourage their children to smile even if a gift was disappointing). Ekman and Friesen [4] pointed out that in order to deceive others her/his inner state, the liar can 1) simulate an emotional expression when s/he does not feel any emotion 2) mask emotion that s/he really feels with another emotional expression or 3) try to neutralize emotion s/he feels by showing neutral expression. However, fake emotional expression may be accompanied by emotional “leakage”. Even people adept at masking and simulating emotion cannot prevent leakage of real emotions [5]. The leakage of real emotions appears especially in the upper part of the face [6]. Emotional leakage has been demonstrated in studies of micro-expressions. According to Ekman [7], deception may be accompanied by a brief (<1/15 s) facial expression of emotion inconsistent with the speaker's statements. Speakers may have various motivations for concealing emotion. Such motivations are not necessarily deceptive, but deception may be one of the main contexts in which inconsistent microexpressions are expressed [8], [9].

Evidence from studies of microexpressions [8] implies that detection of microexpressions may contribute to competence in the detection of deception. The everyday lie may often be accompanied by a facial – verbal inconsistency. However, research need not focus solely on microexpressions. A recent, large-scale study [6] found that deceptive facial emotional expressions often lasted up to a full second, i.e., longer than microexpressions as defined by Ekman [7]. Furthermore, complete deceptive expressions were rare; partial microexpressions associated with only one part of the face were more common. Deceptive expressions were more common in the lower part of the face, perhaps because people have difficulty in voluntarily controlling the medial part of the frontalis muscle.

The present study thus focused on detection of inconsistency between relatively long duration facial emotion (2 s) and verbal content. There is rather little previous research on such inconsistencies. In the criminal justice system, it is often believed that the appropriateness of expressed emotion is important for evaluating the credibility of suspects and witnesses. For example, in the recent case of Amanda Knox, accused of murdering her friend in Perugia, Italy, her failure to express appropriate grief was one factor that led police to suspect her guilt [10]. Kaufmann et al. [11] showed in a simulation study that evaluations of the credibility of a rape victim's testimony were influenced by the extent to which she expressed socially-defined appropriate emotions such as despair. Another line of evidence comes from studies of depression. Clinical evidence suggests that depressed individuals may be adept at detecting false reassurances [12]. Dysphoric individuals are indeed more competent than controls in detecting lies made during videotaped statements, although they are also superior at detecting lies from voice alone [13].

Individual differences in deception detection Detecting lies requires paying attention to appropriate cues and interpreting them correctly. Nonetheless, studies showed that detection of deception among non-trained people as well as professionals only slightly exceeds the level of guessing (for review see: [14]). Indeed, knowledge about deception cues among both professionals (e.g., police officers) and lay persons is mostly incorrect [15]. Students have the same incorrect beliefs about the relevant cues indicating deception as customs officers, police detectives, police patrol officers and prison guards [16]. Apparently, prisoners have the most accurate knowledge about deception cues, because success in their world depends on their ability to detect deceit [16]. Although some researchers claim that it is unclear whether detection of deception is a stable characteristic [17] and meta-analysis lead to pessimistic conclusions [18], results of several studies suggest that people consistently vary in lie detection skills [19], [20]. Indeed, some researchers claim that ‘truth wizards’ – people who are particularly accurate in lie detection – really do exist [21], [22], [23]. It could be hypothesized that individuals exhibiting high emotional and social skills are better lie detectors. DePaulo and Tang [24] shown that observers low in social anxiety are better in deception detection than the ones with high scores. Deception detection is also positively correlated with self-awareness, which provides information about both one's own and someone else's mind [25]. However, extraversion, sociability and trust, which are as well socially valuable characteristics, are negatively correlated with discrimination between real and fabricated memories, while neuroticism facilitates effective lie detection [26], [27]. Analyses of gender differences also lead to inconsistent conclusions. On the one hand women are superior in detecting deception of their romantic partners [28]. This difference could be explained with their predominance in reading nonverbal cues (including facial expressions). Women are also superior in experimental ‘mind-reading’ tasks, i.e., inferring the thoughts and feelings of an acquaintance or partner from observing their behavior [29] and in perceptual sensitivity to very subtle non-verbal affective signals (e.g. positive facial expression) [30]. Females pay more attention to nonverbal cues and consider more of them during decision making [31], [32]. On the other hand, women's superiority vanishes in case of interaction with strangers [33]. Given that deception processes are highly emotionally loaded, gender differences in this area may result from more general sex differences in emotional processes. Gender differences in emotional experience, emotional expression, and nonverbal communication behaviors relating to emotion are among the most confirmed disparities between males and females [34]. Both differential socialization [35], [36] and evolutionary processes (e.g., [37]) may contribute to gender differences. Females have greater ability than males to perceive facial expressions of emotion as early as three years of age, but there may be various sociocultural moderator factors [38], [39], [40]. There may also be qualitative differences between the genders in which regions of the brain are activated during the perception of emotional expressions [41], [42]. Furthermore, literature reviews [43], as well as more recent studies (e.g., [44]), suggest a modest female advantage in accurate emotion recognition. Although some well-designed and substantial studies have failed to show any gender difference in facial emotion decoding [45], it is highly probable that some uncontrolled causes were responsible for the lack of gender effect (e.g., ceiling effect in the Hoffman et al.'s study [45]).

How emotional intelligence can facilitate deception detection Existing research has successfully sought for relatively reliable cues enabling effective deception detection (e.g., [46]), attempted to identify groups that perform better in lie detection (e.g., [21]), and investigated whether deception detection can be trained (e.g., [47]). However, it is unclear which individual difference variables would systematically enhance or weaken individual accuracy in judging deception [18]. In the present study, we examine whether emotional intelligence may prove crucial for individual effectiveness in detecting ‘emotional liars’. Emotional intelligence (EI) has been one of the most often investigated, albeit controversial constructs, in contemporary psychology, since its introduction in 1990 by Peter Salovey and John Mayer [48] (see for a review: [49]). Development of reliable and valid measurement instruments has been especially problematic (e.g., [50]). Among numerous EI theories, the ability-based model developed by Mayer and Salovey [51] seems to have the strongest theoretical and empirical bases. Its strengths include its low redundancy with personality and IQ, and objective nature of EI measurement (i.e., maximum performance test). The MSCEIT test based on the model also appears to be a valid predictor of effectiveness in social and interpersonal activities [52], [53]. Therefore, we adopted the model as the conceptual basis for the present study. Mayer and Salovey [51] distinguish four branches, each describing one group of emotional abilities: 1) perception, appraisal, and expression of emotion, 2) emotional facilitation of thinking, 3) understanding and analysing emotions, and employing emotional knowledge, and 4) reflective regulation of emotion. Each of the particular abilities constituting each branch may prove vital for detecting emotional deception. First, an ability to identify emotion in other people (second ability of branch 1), which is often considered a core ability of EI [54], seem necessary (albeit not sufficient) for detecting emotional leakage and unmasking emotional liars. It seems obvious that without effective perception of emotion an individual is unable to detect an emotional deceit. Mayer and Salovey [51] explicitly describe an “ability to discriminate between (…) honest dishonest expressions of feeling” (p. 11) as a symptom of the highest level of branch 1 abilities. However, emotional perception is not the only ability necessary for detecting emotional lies. Emotional facilitation of thought, particularly an ability to use emotion to direct attention to important information, may support more basic emotional perception skills. Emotional understanding abilities, including recognizing relations between words and emotions themselves, help in interpreting the meaning that emotions convey regarding interpersonal interactions, as well as in recognizing likely transitions among emotions (see: [51]). Such emotional reasoning processes seem particularly important when one has to combine an interlocutor's verbal expressions with information coming from their facial expressions (such a “combined” strategy facilitates detecting deception [46]). Even the emotional regulation branch may prove useful in deception detection as it contains abilities “to reflectively engage or detach from emotion depending on its judged informativeness and utility” as well as to “reflectively monitor emotions in relation to oneself and other” ([51], p. 11). Two studies have investigated EI in the context of deception. One revealed that individuals higher in the ability to perceive and express emotions feign emotions more convincingly than others, but they were still not immune to emotional leakage [5]. Similar results were reported by Elfenbein et al. [55]; however, in this study only emotion recognition ability, not overall EI, was measured. Both these studies investigated deception skills. The other relevant study [56], tested whether high EI was a major characteristic of ‘detection wizards’. Paradoxically, although total EI score was not related to discrimination of truths and lies, the perception branch score proved negatively related to detecting deceptive targets. However, the experiment design in this experiment was rather specific, engaging real-life videos of individuals emotionally pleading for the safe return of their missing family member, half of whom were responsible for the missing one's disappearance (or murder). Therefore, this study considered high-stakes emotional deception, and presented liars who could be characterized as psychopaths. Results may not generalize to the mundane lies of ‘everyday’ situations. Perhaps as a result of gender differences in emotional-cognitive processes previously described in the previous section (see also: [57]), females are superior over males in EI, when the construct is considered as an ability and measured with a performance test (e.g., [58]). For self-reported measures the results are inconsistent, depending on the EI subscale (e.g., [59]). What is interesting, in some cases gender may moderate a relationship between EI and other variables (e.g., [60]). In the present study we used a performance-based measure of EI to investigate gender differences in detection of inconsistency in combined facial and verbal emotional signals.