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People are sometimes tempted to lie for their own benefit if it would not harm others. For adults, dishonesty is the default response in these circumstances. The developmental origins of this phenomenon were investigated between 2019 and 2021 among 6- to 11-year-old Han Chinese children from China (N = 548, 49% female). Children had an opportunity to win prizes in a behavioral economics game (Experiment 1) or a temptation resistance game adapted from developmental psychology (Experiment 2). In each experiment, the youngest children showed a default tendency of honesty and there was an overall age-related shift toward a default tendency of dishonesty. These findings provide direct evidence of developmental change in the automatic and controlled processes that underlie moral behavior.

The feedback concealed information test (fCIT) is a novel form of the CIT, providing participants with feedback regarding their memory concealment performance. The fCIT utilizes event-related potentials (recognition-P300 and feedback-related event-related potentials) and has been shown to provide high efficiency in detecting information concealment. However, it is unclear how well the fCIT performs in the presence of mental countermeasures. To address this question, participants were trained to use countermeasures during fCIT. Results showed that the recognition-P300 efficiency decreased when participants used countermeasures. However, the efficiencies of feedback-related negativity and feedback-P300 were unchanged, with feedback-P300 still showing a high detection efficiency (AUC = 0.86) during countermeasures. These findings demonstrate the potential of fCIT for subverting countermeasures.

This research examined the effectiveness of using norms to promote honesty. Participants were Han Chinese children (N = 568, 50.4% male, 3.24 to 6.00 years, collected 2020-2022). Relative to children in a control condition, children in Study 1 were more likely to confess to having cheated in a game after being presented with a descriptive norm indicating that confessions are typical, or an injunctive norm indicating that most other children approve of confessing. Study 2 showed that this finding was not due to a methodological artifact, and Study 3 replicated the effect in a context in which the norm information was conveyed by someone other than the experimenter. The findings suggest that messages about social norms can influence children's honesty.

The feedback concealed information test (fCIT) is a new variant of the CIT that added feedback about participants’ concealing performances in the classical CIT. The advantage of the fCIT is that the resulting feedback related event-related potentials (ERPs) can be used to detect concealed information. However, the detection efficiency of feedback-based ERPs varies across studies. The present experiment examined whether the extent participants believed the feedback influenced their detection efficiency. Specifically, participants did a mock crime and were then tested in a fCIT. Following the fCIT, participants were asked to report how much they believed the feedback was accurate. Results showed that there were no significant correlations between the amplitude of the feedback related negativity (FRN), feedback P300, and participants’ self-report at the group level. However, individual analyses showed that the detection efficiency of both the FRN and feedback P300 were influenced by participants’ belief about the presented feedback. The detection efficiency of the FRN and the feedback P300 was higher among participants who believed the feedback. These findings suggest that the fCIT is dependent to some extent on the participants’ level of belief in the feedback.

The feedback concealed information test (fCIT) is a novel variant of a CIT, which provides participants with feedback regarding their memory concealment performance during the CIT. Previous studies have found that feedback-related ERPs associated with feedback processing in the fCIT can accurately identify concealed information. However, it is still unknown whether the feedback influences the process and ERP signs of recognition during memory concealment, such as the recognition P300. To address this issue, the present study directly compared the recognition-based P300 in CITs with and without feedback. Results showed that the probe elicited a larger recognition P300 than irrelevants in both CITs with and without feedback, and there were no significant differences in recognition P300 between those two CITs. Moreover, the detection rate for recognition-based P300 in both CITs also had no significant difference. The feedback-related ERPs, especially feedback P300, continued to discriminate guilty and innocent subjects with AUCs well above the chance.

In this study, brain imaging data from functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) associated with skin conductance response (SCR), heart rate (HR), and reaction time (RT) were combined to determine if the combination of these indicators could improve the efficiency of deception detection in concealed information test (CIT). During the CIT, participants were presented with a series of names and cities that served as target, probe, or irrelevant stimuli. In the guilty group, the probe stimuli were the participants' own names and hometown cities, and they were asked to deny this information. Our results revealed that probe items were associated with longer RT, larger SCR, slower HR, and higher oxyhemoglobin (HbO) concentration changes in the inferior prefrontal gyrus (IFG), middle frontal gyrus (MFG), and the superior frontal gyrus (SFG) compared with irrelevant items for participants in the guilty group but not in the innocent group. Furthermore, our results suggested that the combination of RT, SCR, HR, and fNIRS indicators could improve the deception detection efficiency to a very high area under the ROC curve (0.94) compared with any of the single indicators (0.74-0.89). The improved deception detection efficiency might be attributed to the reduction of random error and the diversiform underlying the psychophysiological mechanisms reflected by each indicator. These findings demonstrate a feasible way to improve the deception detection efficiency by using combined multiple indicators.

Numerous studies have sought proof of whether people are genuinely honest by testing whether cognitive control mechanisms are recruited during honest and dishonest behaviors. The underlying assumption is: Deliberate behaviors require cognitive control to inhibit intuitive responses. However, cognitive control during honest and dishonest behaviors can be required for other reasons than deliberation. Across 58 neuroimaging studies (1,176 subjects), we investigated different forms of honest and dishonest behaviors and demonstrated that many brain regions previously implicated in dishonesty may reflect more general cognitive mechanisms. We argue that the motivational/volitional dimension is central to deliberation and provide evidence that motivated dishonest behaviors recruit the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex. This work questions the view that cognitive control is a hallmark of dishonesty.

The present study examined the role of executive function in lying for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The temptation resistance paradigm was used to elicit children's self-protective lies and the Hide-and-seek task was used to elicit children's self-benefiting lies. Results showed that children with ASD told fewer lies in the two deception tasks compared to children with intellectual disability (ID) and typically developing (TD) children. Furthermore, children with ASD's lying were positively correlated with their working memory, but not with their theory of mind. These findings demonstrate that the mechanisms underlying deception for children with ASD are distinct from that of TD children.

Recent evolutionary, cultural, and economic theories have postulated strong connections between human sociality and complex cognition. One prediction derived from this work is that deception should confer cognitive benefits on children. The current research tests this possibility by examining whether learning to deceive during early childhood promotes more advanced theory of mind and executive function skills during a time when these skills are undergoing rapid development. A total of 42 children (Mage = 40.45 months; 22 boys and 20 girls) who showed no initial ability to deceive were randomly assigned to an experimental condition or a control condition. In both conditions, they played a hide-and-seek game against an adult opponent on 4 consecutive days, but only the children in the experimental condition were taught how to deceive the opponent in order to win the game. Unlike children in the control condition, children in the experimental condition significantly improved their executive function and theory of mind skills, providing the first evidence that learning to deceive causally enhances cognitive skills in young children.

The current study investigated the development of second-order lying and its relation to theory of mind and executive function. Previous studies have examined only first-order lying, in which a child makes an untruthful statement to intentionally deceive an unsuspecting opponent. As opposed to first-order lying, second-order lying requires the use of both lies and truths to deceive an opponent because the opponent is fully aware of the liar’s deceptive intention. Here, we used a modified hide-and-seek task, in which children were asked to hide a coin in either one of their hands for opponents to find. In this task, the opponents did not consistently look for the coin in the location indicated by the children. Thus, children could not win the desirable reward if they only told lies to deceive; they needed to switch between telling lies and telling truths (i.e., second-order lies) to deceive opponents. The results showed that children could tell second-order lies by 4 years of age, and their ability to do so was significantly related only to the second-order ignorance scores (early second-order theory of mind understanding). The current findings suggest that second-order ignorance, but not second-order false belief understanding, contributes to children’s second-order lying.

Scientific research on how children learn to tell lies has existed for more than a century. Earlier studies mainly focused on moral, social, and situational factors contributing to the development of lying. Researchers have only begun to explore the cognitive correlations of children's lying in the last two decades. Cognitive theories suggest that theory of mind (ToM) and executive function (EF) should be closely related to the development of lying since lying is, in essence, ToM and EF in action. Yet, findings from empirical studies are mixed. To address this issue, the current meta-analysis reviewed all prior literature that examined the relations between children's lying and ToM and/or between children's lying and EF. In total, 47 papers consisting of 5099 participants between 2 and 19 years of age were included, which yielded 74 effect sizes for ToM and 94 effect sizes for EF. Statistically significant but relatively small effects were found between children's lying and ToM (r = .17) and between lying and EF (r = .13). Furthermore, EF's correlation with children's initial lies was significantly smaller than its correlation with children's ability to maintain lies. This comprehensive meta-analysis provides a clear picture of the associations between children's ToM/EF and their lying behavior and confirms that ToM and EF indeed play a positive role in children's lying and its development.

The present study examines whether collaborative situations make individuals more dishonest in face-to-face settings. It also considers how this dishonesty unfolds over time. To address these questions, we employed a sequential dyadic die-rolling task in which two participants in a pair sitting face-to-face received a payoff only if both reported the same outcome when each one rolled their die. In each trial, one participant (role A) rolled a die first and reported the outcome. Then, the second participant (role B) was informed of A’s reported number, rolled a die as well, and reported the outcome. If their reported outcomes were identical, both of them received a reward. We also included an individual condition in which an individual subject rolled a die twice and received a reward if he/she reported the same die-roll outcome. We found that B lied significantly more than participants in the individual condition, whereas A lied as much as participants in the individual condition. Furthermore, when collaborating, more and more participants (both A and B) became dishonest as the game progressed, whereas there was no such trend among participants in the individual condition. These findings provide evidence indicating that collaborative settings increase dishonesty and that this effect becomes more evident as the collaboration progress.

Neuroimaging technologies have improved our understanding of deception and also exhibit their potential in revealing the origins of its neural mechanism. In this study, a quantitative power analysis method that uses the Welch power spectrum estimation of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) signals was proposed to examine the brain activation difference between the spontaneous deceptive behavior and controlled behavior. The power value produced by the model was applied to quantify the activity energy of brain regions, which can serve as a neuromarker for deception detection. Interestingly, the power analysis results generated from the Welch spectrum estimation method demonstrated that the spontaneous deceptive behavior elicited significantly higher power than that from the controlled behavior in the prefrontal cortex. Meanwhile, the power findings also showed significant difference between the spontaneous deceptive behavior and controlled behavior, indicating that the reward system was only involved in the deception. The proposed power analysis method for processing fNIRS data provides us an additional insight to understand the cognitive mechanism of deception.

Although there is widespread acknowledgment that children acquire social and moral values during development via socialization processes, few plausible mechanisms have been systematically evaluated. In the present research, we examine the effectiveness of 1 potential mechanism: overheard conversations about the moral behavior of others. We examine this issue with reference to the important social value of honesty. Across 3 preregistered studies, preschool-age children in China (total N = 276) were presented with a version of the temptation resistance paradigm in which they were first given an opportunity to cheat by peeking at the answer in a guessing game and were then asked whether they had cheated. Study 1 included both 3- and 5-year-olds, and Studies 2 and 3 included 5-year-olds only. In Study 1 children were more likely to truthfully confess to peeking if they had previously overheard 2 adults say that another child's confession made them happy. An increase in truthful confessions was also seen in Study 2, even though this time the adult who asked about peeking had not been present for the overheard conversation. In Study 3, children were presented with an overheard conversation that lacked any emotion-related language, and the effect was seen once again. Taken together, these findings suggest that overheard conversations can be used to promote truth telling. More broadly, the findings suggest that children realize the attitudes adults express about others can have implications for their own behavior and can identify these attitudes, even when they are not the target of the communication. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

In this study, fused electroencephalography (EEG) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) techniques were utilized to examine the relationship between the ERP (event-related potential) component P300 and fNIRS hemodynamic signals for high-accuracy deception detection. During the performance of a modified concealed information test (CIT) task, a series of Chinese names were presented, which served as the target, irrelevant, or the probe stimuli for both the guilty and innocent groups. For participants in the guilty group, the probe stimulus was their individual name, whereas for the innocent group, the probe stimulus was one irrelevant name. In particular, data from concurrent fNIRS and ERP recordings were carefully inspected for participants from the two groups. Interestingly, we discovered that for the guilty group, the probe stimulus elicited significantly higher P300 amplitude at parietal site and also evoked significantly stronger oxyhemoglobin (HbO) concentration changes in the bilateral superior frontal gyrus and bilateral middle frontal gyrus than the irrelevant stimuli. However, this is not the case for the innocent group, in which participants exhibited no significant differences in both ERP and fNIRS measures between the probe and irrelevant stimuli. More importantly, our findings also demonstrated that the combined ERP and fNIRS feature was able to differentiate the guilty and innocent groups with enhanced sensitivity, in which AUC (the area under Receiver Operating Characteristic curve) is 0.94 for deception detection based on the combined indicator, much higher than that based on the ERP component P300 only (0.85) or HbO measure only (0.84).

Does deception necessarily involve false statements that are incompatible with the truth? In some cases, people choose truthful statements in order to mislead others. This type of deception has been investigated less. The current study employed event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate the neurocognitive processes when both truthful and false statements were used to deceive others. We focused our ERP analysis on two stages: a decision making stage during which participants decided whether to tell a false or a truthful statement, and an outcome evaluation stage during which participants evaluated whether their deception had succeeded or not. Results showed that in the decision making stage, intentions to deceive elicited larger N200s and smaller P300s than an honest control condition. During the outcome evaluation stage, success/failure feedback in the deception condition elicited larger Reward positivity (RewP) and feedback-P300 than feedback after honest responses. Importantly, whether participants chose to tell false or true statements, did not further modulate executive control or reward-related processes. Taken together, these results suggest that during interpersonal deception, having deceptive intentions engages executive control and reward-related processes regardless of the veracity of statements.

Employing an event-related potential (ERP)-based concealed information test (CIT), the present study investigated (1) the neurocognitive processes when people received feedbacks regarding their deceptive/truthful responses and (2) whether such feedback-related ERP activities can be used to detect concealed information above and beyond the recognition-related P300. During the CIT, participants were presented with rare, meaningful probes (their own names) embedded within a series of frequent yet meaningless irrelevants (others’ names). Participants were instructed to deny their recognition of the probes. Critically, following participants’ responses, they were provided with feedbacks regarding whether they succeeded or failed in the CIT. Replicating previous ERP-based CITs, we found a larger P300 elicited by probe compared to irrelevant. Regarding feedback-related ERPs, a temporospatial Principle Component Analyses found two ERP components that were not only sensitive to feedback manipulations but also can discriminate probe from irrelevant: an earlier, central-distributed positivity that was elicited by “success” feedbacks peaked around 219 ms; and a later, right central-distributed positivity that was also elicited by “success” feedbacks, peaked around 400 ms. Importantly, the feedback ERPs were not correlated with P300 that was elicited by probe/irrelevant, suggesting that these two ERPs reflect independent processes underlying memory concealment. These findings illustrate the feasibility and promise of using feedback-related ERPs to detect concealed memory and thus deception.

The present study focused on the potential application of fNIRS in the detection of concealed information. Participants either committed a mock crime or not and then were presented with a randomized series of probes (crime-related information) and irrelevants (crime-irrelevant information) in a standard concealed information test (CIT). Participants in the guilty group were instructed to conceal crime-related information they obtained from the mock crime, thus making deceptive response to the probes. Meanwhile, their brain activity to probes and irrelevants was recorded by functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). At the group level, we found that probe items were associated with longer reaction times and greater activity in bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and supplementary motor cortex than irrelevant items in the guilty group, but not in the innocent group. These findings provided evidence on neural correlates of recognition during a CIT. Finally, on the basis of the activity in bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and supplementary motor cortex, the correct classification of guilty versus innocent participants was approximately 75 % and the combination of fNIRS and reaction time measures yielded a better classification rate of 83.3 %. These findings illustrate the feasibility and promise of using fNIRS to detect concealed information.

Several recent studies have suggested that cues that predict outcomes elicit a feedback-related-like negativity (FRN-like negativity) reflecting initial appraisals of whether desired outcomes are probable. Some other studies, however, have found that the cues that predict outcomes elicited event-related potentials (ERPs) that reflect the expectation to outcomes (e.g., outcome expectations). Given these mixed findings, this study aimed to examine whether the brain activity elicited by predictive cues in a gambling task reflected the initial evaluations of the outcomes, the outcome expectations, or both. We used a gambling task in which the participants were told to guess which of two doors hid a reward. At the beginning of each trial, a cue was presented to inform the participants of how many doors hid a reward. We found that these predictive cues elicited a FRN-like negativity at the frontal sites within around 200-300 ms. However, this negativity did not significantly differ between the cues that fully predicted gains and the cues that fully predicted losses. Furthermore, predictive cues elicited an expectation-related slow wave, and cues that predicted gains with a 50% probability elicited a larger expectation-related slow wave than cues that fully predicted gains or losses. Our results suggest that cues predicting outcomes reflect outcome expectations rather than initial evaluations of the forthcoming outcomes.

Deception is not a rare occurrence among human behaviors; however, the present brain mapping techniques are insufficient to reveal the neural mechanism of deception under spontaneous or controlled conditions. Interestingly, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has emerged as a highly promising neuroimaging technique that enables continuous and noninvasive monitoring of changes in blood oxygenation and blood volume in the human brain. In this study, fNIRS was used in combination with complex network theory to extract the attribute features of the functional brain networks underling deception in subjects exhibiting spontaneous or controlled behaviors. Our findings revealed that the small-world networks of the subjects engaged in spontaneous behaviors exhibited greater clustering coefficients, shorter average path lengths, greater average node degrees, and stronger randomness compared with those of subjects engaged in control behaviors. Consequently, we suggest that small-world network topology is capable of distinguishing well between spontaneous and controlled deceptions.

Deception is not a rare occurrence among human behaviors; however, the present brain mapping techniques are insufficient to reveal the neural mechanism of deception under spontaneous or controlled conditions. Interestingly, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has emerged as a highly promising neuroimaging technique that enables continuous and noninvasive monitoring of changes in blood oxygenation and blood volume in the human brain. In this study, fNIRS was used in combination with complex network theory to extract the attribute features of the functional brain networks underling deception in subjects exhibiting spontaneous or controlled behaviors. Our findings revealed that the small-world networks of the subjects engaged in spontaneous behaviors exhibited greater clustering coefficients, shorter average path lengths, greater average node degrees, and stronger randomness compared with those of subjects engaged in control behaviors. Consequently, we suggest that small-world network topology is capable of distinguishing well between spontaneous and controlled deceptions.

Recent studies have shown that instructed cognitive reappraisal can regulate the neural processing of reward. However, it is still unclear whether the habitual use of cognitive reappraisal in everyday life is related to brain activity involved in reward processing. In the present study, participants' neural responses to reward were measured using electroencephalography (EEG) recorded during a gambling task and their tendency to use cognitive reappraisal was assessed using the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ). Event-related potential (ERP) results indicated that losses on the gambling task elicited greater negative reward-related feedback negativity (FN) than gains. The differential FN between losses and gains was significantly correlated with cognitive reappraisal scores across participants such that individuals with a higher tendency to use cognitive reappraisal showed stronger reward processing (i.e., amplified FN difference between losses and gains). This correlation remained significant after controlling for expressive suppression scores. However, expressive suppression per se was not correlated with FN differences. Taken together, these results suggest that the habitual use of cognitive reappraisal is associated with increased neural processing of reward.

The present study introduced a novel variant of the concealed information test (CIT), called the feedback-CIT. By providing participants with feedbacks regarding their memory concealment performance during the CIT, we investigated the feedback-related neural activity underlying memory concealment. Participants acquired crime-relevant memories via enacting a lab crime, and were tested with the feedback-CIT while EEGs were recorded. We found that probes (e.g., crime-relevant memories) elicited larger recognition-P300s than irrelevants among guilty participants. Moreover, feedback-related negativity (FRN) and feedback-P300 could also discriminate probes from irrelevants among guilty participants. Both recognition- and feedback-ERPs were highly effective in distinguishing between guilty and innocent participants (recognition-P300: AUC=.73; FRN: AUC=.95; feedback-P300: AUC=.97). This study sheds new light on brain-based memory detection, such that feedback-related neural signals can be employed to detect concealed memories.

It is well established that children lie in different social contexts for various purposes from the age of 2 years. Surprisingly, little is known about whether very young children will spontaneously lie for personal gain, how self-benefiting lies emerge, and what cognitive factors affect the emergence of self-benefiting lies. To bridge this gap in the literature, we situated children between 2 and 4 years of age in a zero-sum game where children must lie to their opponent if they wanted to win a desirable reward. We found that the majority of young children did not lie even when they experienced personal losses repeatedly. However, some children spontaneously lied during the game; as the game progressed, more children lied. Further, we found that children's theory of mind understanding and executive functioning in terms of a combination of inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility had significant positive and unique correlations with how frequently children lied for personal gain. The present results taken together with the existing findings regarding children's lies for self-protection and politeness purposes suggest that the act of lying begins early in life. Further, its emergence and development are influenced by children's specific cognitive abilities in the domains of theory of mind understanding and executive functioning. Highlights The study investigated whether very young children will spontaneously lie for personal gain. This study used a zero-sum game to elicit children's self-benefiting lies. Results showed the majority of young children did not lie, and it is related to children's theory of mind understanding and executive functioning. The act of lying begins early in life, and its emergence and development are influenced by children's specific cognitive abilities in the domains of theory of mind understanding and executive functioning.

The present study focused on neural correlates underlying second-order deception. In first-order deception, the recipient of deception is unaware of the deceiver's deceptive intention. However, during second-order deception, the recipient is fully aware of the deceiver's deceptive intention and thus the deceiver needs to use both lies and truths to deceive the recipient. Using the functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) methodology and a naturalistic interactive game, we found that second-order deception elicited significantly greater [oxy-Hb] changes in the prefrontal cortex (the right superior frontal gyrus (SFG), BA6) than the non-deceptive control condition. This finding suggests that second-order deception, like first-order deception, engages specifically the cortical regions associated with the planning of complex actions and goal processing. We also found that lying to deceive produced greater neural activities in the right middle frontal gyrus than truth-telling to deceive. This suggests that although both actions serve deceptive purposes, making a false statement contradicting the true state of affairs still requires more executive control and thus greater neural responses in the cortical regions associated with this function. In addition, we found that the successful deception produced greater neural activities in a broad area of the prefrontal frontal cortex than failure to deceive, indicating the involvement of the cortical reward system during second-order deception. Further, failure of truth-telling to deceive produced greater neural responses in the right SFG than failure of lying to deceive. The present findings taken together suggest that second-order deception engages both the cortical executive and reward systems.