Behaviors such as gaze aversion and repetitive movements are commonly believed to be signs of deception and low credibility; however, they may also be characteristic of individuals with developmental or mental health conditions. We examined the effect of five behaviors that are common among autistic individuals--gaze aversion, repetitive…

The present study examined children's and adults' categorization and moral judgment of truthful and untruthful statements. 7-, 9- and 11-year-old Chinese children and college students read stories in which story characters made truthful or untruthful statements and were asked to classify and evaluate the statements. The statements varied in terms…

Under most circumstances, children (and adults) can safely assume that the testimony they hear is true. In two studies, we investigated whether 3-year-olds (N = 100) would continue to hold this assumption even if the person who provided the testimony behaved in an uncertain, ignorant, and/or distracted manner. In Study 1, children were less likely…

A conversational approach is developed to explain the ubiquitous presence of rumors, urban legends, and gossip as arising from their conversational properties rather than from side effects of cognitive processing or "effort after meaning." It is suggested that the primary function of telling rumors, gossip, and urban legends is not to impart…

Analyzes some of the most frequent deceptive interactions as rendered through case histories of male con artists and their victims taken from police records. Discusses the recurrent elements in both the con-games strategies and victims' way of interpreting those strategies. (JMF)

Briefly reviews research that has found Blacks to be distrustful of Whites and describes the development of a psychometric instrument that measures four domains of cultural mistrust: education, interpersonal relations, business and work, and politics and law. The Cultural Mistrust Inventory is appended. (GC)

Research shows that people comply more frequently to threats when the credibility of the source is high rather than low and that compliance is directly related to punishment magnitude. To examine the impact of an advisor on a target of threats, male college students (N=74) participated in an experiment that included high or low threatner…

Concludes that expectancy-violation (when audience does not expect the position a communicator advocates) enhances persuasive effectiveness more than similarity or unexpected similarity. (RL)

State-of-the-art examination of lying and deception. Includes motivation, awareness, and consequences; the occasion, time, and nature of deceptive messages; and their detection. (JMF)

Discusses the effects of deliberate vagueness on source credibility, agreement and perceived vagueness. See CS 703 560 for availability. (MH)

A factor analytic study which sought to discover the dimensions of credibility in the context of subordinate and supervisor interaction is reported in this paper. It was hypothesized that perceived supervisor credibility is a function of subordinate part participation in decision making, communication reciprocity, feedback perceptiveness, feedback…

Indicated that (1) arguments perceived as strong by receivers generated both more favorable, supportive cognitive responses and attitude change than weak message arguments; and (2) perceived source expertise and attractiveness influenced cognitive responses, but not in a coherent fashion or to the extent that they effect attitude change. (JD)

Results indicated that both objective evidence and nonverbal behaviors significantly affected perceived expertness. There was no difference in the credibility ratings of the counselor between male and female subjects. Objective evidence and sex interacted significantly, as did objective evidence and nonverbal behavior. (Author)