The Secret Life of Pronouns (20 page)

This chapter has described several types of deception—from the self-deception associated with the denial of emotions and overconfidence to the intentional deception people employ to avoid prison. Even though the motives, strategies, and people associated with these various types of lies are all quite different, the language patterns are surprisingly similar.

Every project, of course, is unique. However, as the studies have mounted, we can stand back and take the Squint Test. The Squint Test is a nonscientific way of trying to assess if there are reliable patterns to deception across the various studies. As you can see in the chart on page 162, there are five general word categories. Each word is associated with a bar on the right. The closer the bar is to the right of the page, the more that word category is associated with honesty and telling the truth. Bars on the far left indicate words that typically occur with people who are lying or being deceptive. Words linked to bars in the middle tend to be either unrelated to deception or are too unreliable to classify.

SELF-REFERENCES: THE I-WORDS

In virtually every chapter of this book, first-person singular pronouns are important. In deception research, the word
I
(including
I’m
,
I’ll
,
I’d
,
I’ve
, and related contractions) is the best single marker of a person’s being honest.

The use of I-words has tremendous social and psychological significance. By definition, it is an identity statement. Using
I
in conversation is announcing to your speaking companion that you are aware of yourself, that you are paying attention to yourself. There is a certain degree of vulnerability in doing this—especially if there is a chance that your companion is judging you or seeking to harm you in some way. I’ve often thought of the use of
I
as a subtle submissive gesture—much like the lower-status dog rolling over and baring his belly to the bigger, more dangerous dog. “Hey, I’m not a problem. I’m at your service. I’m not a threat.”

There have been several studies that suggest that when people are forced to pay attention to themselves, they become more humble and honest. Robert Wicklund, who is now at the University of Bergen in Norway, pioneered a theory of self-awareness in the 1970s. He and his colleagues devised dozens of imaginative studies where people would have to do some kind of task in one of two conditions—in front of a mirror or away from a mirror. If they completed a questionnaire in front of a mirror, they reported having lower self-esteem and generally less positive moods. More intriguing, their answers to questions tended to be more honest—their reports of their weight, grades, and behaviors tended to match objective measures of their true weight, grades, and behaviors. Also, completing questionnaires in front of a mirror caused people to use the word
I
more.

Why does self-attention make people more honest? Wicklund posited that paying attention to the self made people briefly ponder who they ideally wanted to be. Perhaps their lifelong dreams were to be strong, honest, beautiful, brave, and compassionate. Looking in the mirror made them realize that they had not attained these ideals. Ultimately, then, people would see the gulf between their ideal and real selves, which made them feel bad about themselves but, at the same time, motivated them to try to be better people. Self-awareness, in Wicklund’s view, drives us all to be the people we always wanted to be.

Indeed, most of us usually want to be honest with others and with ourselves. Self-attention provokes honesty. I-words simply reflect self-attention. Across the multiple studies, when we see the use of I-words increase, it is likely that self-attention is higher. And, with self-attention, people tend to be more honest.

COGNITIVE COMPLEXITY

The stories that people generate when telling the truth are generally more complex than false stories. Not only do people say more when telling the truth but each sentence they put together is longer and more complex. Their words are bigger, suggesting that their statements are more precise and nuanced. The statements of truth-tellers also come across as more thoughtful, using insight words such as
realize
,
understand
,
think
, and the like.

Note that words with bars on the left side of the table are reliably associated with deception. The farther to the left, the less trustworthy. Those on the right side are markers of honesty. Those words with bars close to the center line are not reliably associated with either truth or deception.

One reason truth-tellers have longer sentences is that they are linking multiple phrases with conjunctions. Conjunctions include words such as
and
,
or
,
but
,
because
, etc. Many of these conjunctions are exclusive words such as
but
,
or
,
except
,
without
,
excluding
. As described in previous chapters, exclusive words are used when people are making distinctions. They are distinguishing what did happen versus what did not, what they were thinking and what they were not thinking about, what was in the category and what was not in the category.

The ability to talk about what you did not do, did not see, or did not think about is a remarkably difficult task when you are lying. If you are telling a completely fabricated story, everything you are saying is something you didn’t experience. In making up a false story, you can quickly get a headache trying to add what you didn’t not do. Most lies, then, are made up of simple and straightforward statements about what the person presumably did or saw. Relatively few specific comments are about what they did not do.

DETAILED INFORMATION

When conveying a true incident, we have access to a rich group of memories about the event and exactly where we were as it unfolded. More specifically, we have knowledge of precisely where our bodies were at the time. Our bodies and the relevant events existed in three-dimensional space that unfolded in real time. It is not surprising, then, that when we describe an event that really happened, we naturally include information about time, space, and motion. Together, these dimensions are captured by relativity words. As can be seen in the table, truth-tellers are far more likely to include words that invoke time (e.g.,
before
,
ten o’clock
,
morning
), space (e.g.,
above
,
next
,
around
), and movements (e.g.,
went
,
put
,
leap
). Along the same dimensions, truth-tellers are more specific in using numbers and quantifiers, which include words like
more
,
less
,
few
,
larger
.

The use of words signifying greater cognitive complexity and detailed information fits nicely with recent research on statements found in the questioning of witnesses. Aldert Vrij, one of the world’s experts on the analysis of interviews of people suspected of crimes, points out that the detection of lying depends on the ways people are asked questions. A policeman, parent, or friend who is accusatory in their interview will likely just get brief statements full of denials—which can be extremely difficult to evaluate. Instead, Vrij and his colleagues recommend that interrogations or interviews should be more open-ended, less judgmental, and aimed at information gathering. The more that a suspect is allowed to say, the more likely that their stories will exonerate or convict them.

Although Vrij and other law enforcement researchers have only recently started to use computer-based methods, they have independently discovered that truth-tellers make statements that are more complex and more detailed.

SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL DIMENSIONS

Many forms of deception are associated with optimism and overconfidence. The person trying to sell you a new rug, a new religion, or a new war often brims with the certainty of truth. Part of the effective salesperson’s approach is convincing you that once you buy the product
there is absolutely no doubt that
you too will be as happy and confident as the salesperson.

Counter to common sense, people who are deceptive make more references to other people and rely on more positive emotion words. The stereotype of the liar is the lonely, furtive, shifty, self-loathing, treacherous, and nervous person who is desperately avoiding capture. There may be a few such liars around but I would urge you to hang on to your wallet more tightly when you happen upon the bubbly, enthusiastic, outgoing, warm, and self-assured person who has a great deal just for you.

Social words, by the way, are a mix of words that indicate a social relationship—including nouns like
friend
,
pal
, and
mother
as well as actions such as talking, calling, and listening. In reading over many of the deception transcripts, it is impressive how frequently people bring up other individuals to try to validate their own statements or to shift the blame to someone else.

VERBS AND ACTIONS

Verbs are complicated. Hang around a language expert such as Steven Pinker for a few hours and your head will soon be swimming with an ocean of verb types. Regular verbs generally express a particular action and can distinguish between past tense and present (but not future). Auxiliary verbs, sometimes called helping verbs, are really only a handful of verbs such as
to be
,
to have
, and
to do
. Auxiliary verbs are associated with a passive voice and are frowned on in American English classes but celebrated in British English classes. Another type, called discrepancy verbs (or modal verbs), includes words like
should
,
could
,
ought
,
must
, and
would
. Discrepancy verbs are used when people suggest some kind of subtle discrepancy between how the world is and how it could, should, or ought to be.

As you can see in the chart, people who use verbs at high rates tend to be more deceptive than people who use fewer verbs. This pattern is particularly strong for auxiliary verbs and discrepancies. Let’s say that you are a grade school teacher and three of your students give practically the same excuse:

1. I finished my homework but the dog ate it.

2. I had finished the homework but the dog must have eaten it.

3. The homework was finished but must have been eaten by the dog.

The first excuse is far more likely to be true. It includes two past-tense verbs that indicate that the actions were specific and were completely finished. The second excuse relies on five verbs that hint that the actions were not completed and, with the word
must
, may not have even happened. And the third person’s excuse is the most scurrilous lie of the three—six verbs, past tense, and not a single I-word.

In English, verbs provide a remarkable amount of information about actions. They hint at whether an action is ongoing, partly completed, or completely finished. Some verbs, such as discrepancies, subtly assert that an action may have occurred—but possibly didn’t. Saying that dog
could
or
must
have eaten the homework strongly implies something about the dog’s behavior but, at the same time, distances the speaker from asserting that the behavior actually occurred.

OTHER COMMON DECEPTION MARKERS

The use of discrepancy verbs points to one of several ways we all try to mislead others while, at the same time, not technically lying. Some of my favorites:

Passive constructions: “Mistakes were made.”
In a delightful book on misinformation,
Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me)
, Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson examine how people frequently avoid responsibility through ingenious linguistic maneuvers. For example, historians are in general agreement that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger frequently deceived the American people about the direction and scope of the Vietnam War during the 1970s. Years later, in an interview, Tavris and Aronson quote Kissinger as saying, “Mistakes were quite possibly made by the administrations in which I served.” Note his wording. Obviously, Kissinger didn’t make any mistakes. Rather, someone probably did.

Avoiding answering a question.
In the mock-crime experiment where students were asked to “steal” a dollar, we asked each person point-blank: “Did you steal the dollar that was in the book?” People who actually did take the money said things such as:

I don’t believe in stealing. I have a problem with it. I did it once a long time ago; I was … younger. I really didn’t like the feeling of knowing they’re going to catch me. I just, you know, especially you said for a dollar? I wouldn’t have taken it.

Why would I? I would never even think to look in the book to look for a dollar. I was just writing in my journal for my freshman seminar.