Transcranial Current Stimulation of the Temporoparietal Junction Improves Lie Detection.
The ability to detect deception is of vital importance in human society, playing a crucial role in communication, cooperation, and trade between societies, businesses, and individuals. However, numerous studies have shown, remarkably consistently, that we are only slightly above chance when it comes to detecting deception. Here we investigate whether inconsistency between one's own opinion and the stated opinion of another impairs judgment of the veracity of that statement, in the same way that one's own mental, affective, and action states, when inconsistent, can interfere with representation of those states in another. Within the context of lie detection, individuals may be less accurate when judging the veracity of another's opinion when it is inconsistent with their own opinion. Here we present a video-mediated lie-detection task to confirm this prediction: individuals correctly identified truths or lies less often when the other's expressed opinion was inconsistent with their own (experiment 1). Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) of the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) has previously been shown to improve the ability to selectively represent the self or another. We therefore predicted that TPJ stimulation would enable lie detectors to inhibit their own views, enhance those of the other, and improve their ability to determine whether another was presenting their true opinion. Experiment 2 confirmed this second prediction: anodal tDCS of the TPJ improved lie detection specifically when one's own and others' views were conflicting.
MRC Social, Genetic, and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience, King's College London, London SE5 8AF, UK. Electronic address: sophie.sowden@kcl.ac.uk.
Sophie
S
Sowden
Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, London WC1E 7HX, UK.
Gordon R T
GR
Wright
Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, London SE14 6NW, UK; Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London WC1N 3AR, UK.
Michael J
MJ
Banissy
MRC Social, Genetic, and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience, King's College London, London SE5 8AF, UK; School of Psychology, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK.
Caroline
C
Catmur
MRC Social, Genetic, and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience, King's College London, London SE5 8AF, UK; Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London WC1N 3AR, UK.
Geoffrey
G
Bird
D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008014:Lie Detection; D008297:Male; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D065908:Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation; D055815:Young Adult