Cheat detection by voice

Voice to characterize human speech is even more important than words. Here the most common signs of fraud are pauses. Pauses may be too long or too frequent. Humming before words, especially if this happens when answering a question, always leads to suspicion. Suspicious and short pauses in the process of the speech itself, if they occur too often. Signs of deception can also be speech errors: interjections, for example, “um”, “well” and “uh”; repeats, for example, “I, I, I mean that I am ...”; extra syllables, for example, "I really liked it."
These voices of deception - speech errors and pauses - can occur for two related reasons. Liar did not think through the line of conduct in advance. If he did not expect to lie, or was ready for this, but did not foresee any particular issue, he may hesitate or make speech mistakes. But this can happen even when the liar has prepared well. The strong fear of exposure can make the prepared liar falter and even forget the already thought out line of conduct. Fear of exposure exacerbates errors and poorly prepared liar. When he hears how implausible his lies sound, he becomes even more afraid of being caught, resulting in an increase in the number of pauses and speech errors.
The tone of voice can also produce deception. While most people believe that the tone of voice reflects the emotions that are currently being tested, scientific research has not yet proven this. There are many ways to distinguish pleasant and unpleasant voices, but it is not yet known whether the voice will sound differently with different negative emotions: with anger, fear, grief, disgust or contempt. I think over time such differences will be discovered. In the meantime, I will describe what is already known and may be useful.
The most studied sign of the manifestation of emotions in the voice is a rise in tone. The fact that in upset people increases the pitch of the voice, showed almost 70% of the experiments. This is especially true probably in cases where people experience anger or fear. There is some evidence that with sadness or sadness the pitch of the voice drops, but this has not yet been proven. Scientists do not yet know whether the pitch of a voice changes with agitation, grief, disgust, or contempt. Others, although not so well-studied signs of emotion, look promising: louder and faster speech in anger or fear, or quieter and slower speech in sadness. It is likely that a breakthrough in this area will occur when we study the aspects of voice characteristics such as tone, changes associated with breathing, and the energy spectrum in different frequency ranges ^[65] .
Emotional voice changes are not easy to hide. If they lie mainly about the emotions directly experienced at the time they utter a lie, the chances that an information leak will occur are quite large. If the purpose of a lie is to hide fear or anger, the voice will be louder and louder, and speech may be faster. Directly opposite changes of voice can give a feeling of sadness, which a deceiver is trying to hide.
In the event of a sudden emergence of emotions, the sound of a voice can also betray a lie that is not aimed at hiding the emotional state. Fear of exposure will certainly affect the voice. The same changes in the voice can cause remorse and sadness, but this is only a guess. It is not yet clear whether the delight of cheating can be determined by voice and measured. In general, it seems to me that any kind of excitement imposes a characteristic imprint on the sound of the voice, but this has not yet been established scientifically.
Our experiment with female nurses for the first time documented the change in pitch of a lying person ^[66] .
We found that with cheating, the pitch of the voice increased. Perhaps this was because the students felt fear. They tested it for two reasons. We have done everything possible to create the impression that very much depends on success. This was necessary in order to increase the fear of exposure. In addition, the spectacle of unpleasant medical scenes caused empathic fear in some nurses. We might not have discovered this if fear was weaker. Suppose research would be carried out among people whose career they could not influence, for whom this would be only an experiment. The motivation would be weak, and the fear felt might not be enough to change the pitch of the voice. Or suppose we would show students a film about a dying child, which would cause sadness rather than fear. Although the fear of being caught in a lie would increase the pitch of their voice, this reaction would have been negated by a feeling of sadness that lowers the tone.
Raising the tone of voice is not an indicator of lies; it is a sign of fear or anger, and perhaps excitement. In our experiment, the presence of these emotions, discovered by the voice, helped to catch a student in a lie, who claimed that the film about flowers makes her delightful sense of peace of mind. However, any manifestation of emotions in the voice should not be interpreted as evidence of deception. A truthful person, fearing that he will not be believed, may, because of this, raise his voice in the same way as a liar who is afraid of being caught. The problem is that not only liars, but absolutely innocent people sometimes experience emotional arousal. A delusion of this kind that arises when the verifier interprets potential signs of deception, I will call the error Othello. In Chapter 5, “Basic Errors and Precautions,” I will discuss this error in detail and indicate how to avoid it. Unfortunately, it's not easy to avoid. In addition, when interpreting changes in voice, the verifier and the Brokaw trap (individual differences in emotional behavior), mentioned earlier with respect to pauses and speech errors, are also lurking.
Just as voice signs of emotions, for example, the pitch of a voice, do not always mark a lie, so their absence does not always prove the veracity. The credibility of the testimony of John Dean during the Watergate process broadcast on national television was partly dependent on how the lack of emotion in his voice, which remained remarkably smooth, would be interpreted. John Dean, an adviser to President Nixon, testified twelve months after the immediate events related to Watergate. A month earlier, Nixon admitted that his assistants had tried to hush up the Watergate story, but denied that he himself was aware of this.
According to the federal judge, John Cyrika: “The small bipod famously stuck, mainly due to the testimony of each other. It only remained to establish the guilt or innocence of the people above. And Dean's testimony just had to answer this question ... Dean admitted (in testimony given to the Senate) that he had repeatedly told Nixon about the million dollars needed to silence the defendants (in the Watergate case), and Nixon did not deny the possibility of payment this money. No shock, no indignation, not the slightest attempt to hide anything. This was Dean's most sensational move. He stated that Nixon personally approved an attempt to bribe the accused. ” ^[67]
The next day, the White House challenged Dean's statements. In his memoirs, published five years later, Nixon wrote: “From my point of view, the testimony of John Dean on the Watergate case was a skillful mixture of truth and falsehood, possible conscientious delusions and obviously conscious distortions of truth. Trying to downplay his own role in this matter, he attributed his personal desire to hush up the story to others. ” ^[68]
At one time, the attacks on Dean were much rougher. A version has been leaked to the press (according to rumors, from the White House) that Dean allegedly lied in his attacks on the president, fearing the encroachment of homosexuals in the event of his imprisonment.
Dean argued one thing, Nixon - another, and few people knew for sure on which side the truth. Judge Syrik, describing his doubts, said: “I must say that I was skeptical about Dean's allegations. He was clearly himself a key figure in an attempt to hush up the matter ... He was losing a lot ... It seemed to me then that Dean, quite possibly, was not so much eager to tell the truth as to shield himself at the expense of the president ” ^[69] .
Further, Syrik describes how impressed Dina’s voice was: “For many days after he read his statement, committee members snapped him with provocative questions. But he stood his ground firmly. He did not look upset at all. His even, impassive voice inspired confidence ” ^[70] .
It may seem to someone else that a person speaking in an even voice controls himself, and this, in turn, suggests that he has something to hide. In order not to be mistaken in interpreting the impersonality of tone, it is necessary to know whether such a manner of speaking is typical for Dean.
An impassive voice does not necessarily indicate truthfulness; some people never show their emotions, at least in their voices. And even emotional people in certain cases can lie without showing emotion. Judge Cyric was trapped in Brokaw. Recall that broadcaster Tom Brokaw interpreted evasiveness as a sign of lying, and I explained that he might be wrong, because some people are always evasive. Judge Syrik, on the other hand, seemed to be making the exact opposite mistake, concluding about truthfulness on the basis of the absence of signs of deception, not realizing that some people never show them.
The reason for both mistakes is that emotional expressiveness is different in different people. The verifier is subject to such mistakes if he does not know what the suspect’s usual emotional behavior is. Brokaw’s trap would not exist if there were no behavioral signs of deception at all.
Then the verifier would have nothing to repel. Also, there would have been no Brokaw trap if the fact that the behavioral signs accompanied lies that were absolutely true for everyone and not just for most people. No sign of deception is universal, but separately and in combination in most cases they can help the verifier. The wife of John Dean, his friends and co-workers should have known whether the emotions in his voice show up, as most people do, or he has an unusual ability to control her voice. Judge Syrik, who was previously unfamiliar with Dean, could not escape the trap Brokaw.
Dispassionate testimony Dean teach another lesson. The verifier must always take into account that the suspect may be an unusually gifted actor who is able to change his behavior in such a way that it is impossible to understand whether he is lying or is telling the truth. John Dean himself admitted that he was a gifted actor. He seemed to know in advance how Cyric and others would interpret his behavior. According to him, when planning his behavior during testimony, he had the following thoughts: “It’s easy to replay or seem too talkative ... I decided that I would read smoothly, without emotions, in a more cold tone and also answer questions ... People tend to think that those who speak the truth are always calm ” ^[71] .
According to Dean, when the cross-examination began after the end of the testimony, he felt a strong emotional arousal. “I was choking, feeling lonely and powerless before the power of the president. I took a deep breath to make it seem like I was thinking; in fact, I just struggled with myself ... "You can't show emotions," I said to myself. The press immediately jumps at it: it’s not like a man, it can be regarded as a sign of weakness ” ^[72] .
The fact that Dean’s speech was thought out beforehand and that he was so talented in controlling his behavior doesn’t catch him lying; he says only that his behavior should be interpreted with greater caution. As a matter of fact, as it turned out later, Dean’s testimony was mostly true, but Nixon (who did not possess such acting talent) was lying.
The last thing to consider before moving on is the statement that there are cars that can accurately determine the lie by voice. These include: Psychological Evaluator of Stress (PSE), Mark-II Voice Analyzer, Voice Stress Analyzer, Psychological Stress Analyzer (PSA), Voice Stress Monitor. Manufacturers of these devices claim that their equipment is able to detect a lie by voice, including by phone. Of course, as is, however, evident from their names, they reveal not a lie, but stress. In the voice there can be no signs of deception as such, and only signs of negative emotions are possible. The producers of these rather expensive devices did not in vain warn the user about the possibility of missing liars who did not experience negative emotions and misinterpret the behavior of truthful people who are upset about something. Scientists specializing in the study of voice, and specialists in other methods for determining lies have found that these machines correctly define lies only in half of cases (simple guessing) and even do not particularly well determine that the object is upset, although this is an easier task ^[73] .
However, this does not seem to affect sales. The ability to detect a lie for sure, and even unobtrusively, is too attractive.