New article by Kirsten Stark and Rasha Abdel Rahman: Lying and truth-telling in social interaction: Basic mechanisms. Read more here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2026.106690
Are lying and truth-telling really two sides of the same coin? We studied both in three preregistered online experiments using a novel social card game in which participants sometimes strategically lied to a (simulated) partner. Lying was slower than truth-telling, replicating the well-established ‘cognitive cost of deception effect’. But surprisingly, truth-telling was more strongly affected by the social-deceptive context in response times. Truth-telling was slower than comparable responses in a non-deceptive task and affected by a temptation to lie, while lying did not consistently differ from control responses. Truth-telling may not simply be a neutral baseline for studying lying.Experiment 1: Truth-telling was affected by the temptation and motivation to deceive. Lying was even slower, showing the expected ‘cost of deception’, but the social-deceptive context shaped truthful responses, too. Experiment 2: Reducing memory load did not reveal a larger difference between lying and control responses. Both were affected similarly, suggesting that memory demands did not moderate the surprisingly small difference between lie and control responses. Experiment 3: When lie and truth were semantically related, lying was facilitated; it became faster. In contrast, semantic relatedness did not affect truth-telling, while it did affect instructed responses. Across experiments: An additional analysis of typing duration revealed a dissociation. While lying took longer to initiate, truth-telling took longer to complete. This measure of response execution may reveal differences obscured in response times. Truth-telling may be more deeply shaped by the social deceptive context than often assumed, with implications for how we understand planning, control, and monitoring during verbal deception. The experimental code is shared alongside the publication, allowing future replications.
