Embodied Cognition and Deception : The Influence of Emotional Congruence in Detecting Lies

Abstract: The influence of facial mimicry and emotional congruence on emotional information processing has previously only been studied in isolation. In the current study their influence on the ability to detect deception will be investigated. In order to recognize the emotional states of others one mimics their emotional facial expression, and being in a congruent emotional state as a person or an emotional message enables faster processing of emotional information. Can emotional congruence between the receiver’s emotional state and a message told affect participants’ ability to detect deception when judging whether a person at a video recording is telling the truth or not? How does emotional congruence affect participants’ speed and confidence when making these judgments? The results showed that participants reported higher confidence but slower response times when making an accurate judgment in the congruent scenario, when compared to the incongruent scenario, but did not perform better than what could be expected by chance in detecting deception. Consequently, emotional congruence had an impact, not on participants’ performance in detecting deception, but only on their meta-cognitive evaluations of their judgments, but confidence rating did not seem to be an indicator of accuracy. In future research the design can be used in order to investigate other potential aspects, such as emotional empathy and other types of emotional congruence, and their influence on the ability to detect deception.