Precis paper

Submitted By kaykiki
Words: 626
Pages: 3

The goal of this study is tried to find out the relationship between nonverbal behaviors and liars. And would these nonverbal behaviors help us to detect liars. Most people assumed a specific causal order that nonverbal behaviors could influence our judgment to the accurate of messages. In Zuckerman et al (1981) and DeTurck and Miller (1985)’s researches, they claimed that we could use nonverbal behaviors to distinguish truth tellers and liars, such as, speech errors, need more time to response, more stops and eye contacts. Levine et al (2006) thought if there was a possibility of reverse causal order, just like egg first or chicken first. The known of message veracity could influence person’s evaluate of another person’s nonverbal behaviors. Levine et al predicted in their research paper that, there was no effect or little effect to show when people were lying to others, they usually avoid eye contact. Researchers believed use eye contact could not distinguish truth tellers and liars. Levine et al invited 115 undergraduate students in communication class of Midwestern University. There were 27 males and 88 females with median age of 21. These students were required to seat in front of a big television. Researchers gave these students 16 videotapes, 8 truths and 8 liars. There were two students in these videotapes, one male and one female. They said 12 statements and half of these statements were lies. Researchers randomly signed these 115 participates into two groups. One group was known which statements in these videotapes were truth and which were false. And the other group didn’t know. After the student finished watching these videotapes, he/she had to give the rate of how many eye contacts did the two students made in the videotapes. And researchers compared the different rate of eye contacts between these two groups. Levine et al found out in this experiment that eye contact was not a tool for people to distinguish truth tellers and liars. The result Levine et al found that eye contact associated with our belief was consistent with Gilbert et al (1990,1993)’s mental representation. Gilbert believed that when we processed a message was truth or not required our initial belief. When participates faced true statements, they gave almost the same rate of eye contact no matter which group they were in. But when the statements were false, participates who knew statements were false gave dramatically less eye contact