"Have You Ever Seen This Face?" - Individual Differences and Event-Related Potentials during Deception

Abstract

Deception studies emphasize on the importance of event-related potentials (ERP) for a reliable differentiation of the underlying neuro-cognitive processes. The stimulus-locked parietal P3 amplitude has been shown to reflect stimulus salience but also attentional control available for stimulus processing. Known stimuli requiring truthful responses (targets) and known stimuli requiring deceptive responses (probes) were hypothesized to be more salient than unknown stimuli. Thus, a larger P3 was predicted for known truthful and deceptive stimuli than for unknown stimuli. The Medial Frontal Negativity (MFN) represents the amount of required cognitive control and was expected to be more negative to known truthful and deceptive stimuli than to unknown stimuli. Moreover, we expected higher sensitivity to injustice (SI-perpetrator) and aversiveness (Trait-BIS) to result in more intense neural processes during deception. N = 102 participants performed a deception task with three picture types: probes requiring deceptive responses, targets requiring truthful responses to known stimuli, and irrelevants being associated with truthful responses to unknown stimuli. Repeated-measures ANOVA and fixed-links modeling suggested a more positive parietal P3 and a more negative frontal MFN to deceptive vs. irrelevant stimuli. Trait-BIS and SI-perpetrator predicted an increase of the P3 and a decrease of the MFN from irrelevants to probes. This suggested an intensification of stimulus salience and cognitive control across picture types in individuals scoring either higher on Trait-BIS or higher on SI-perpetrator. In contrast, individuals with both higher Trait-BIS and higher SI-perpetrator scores showed a less negative probe-MFN suggesting that this subgroup invests less cognitive control to probes. By extending prior research we demonstrate that personality modulates stimulus salience and control processes during deception.

Keywords: MFN; P3; deception; fixed-links modeling; individual differences.

Figure 1

Sequence of a probe item, a target item, and an irrelevant item. The inter-trial-interval (ITI), which was 1000, 1500, or 2000 ms, is not presented in the figure.

Figure 2

(A) Stimulus-locked grand averages at Pz separated for Picture type (N = 102). (B) Response-locked grand averages at Fz separated for Picture type (N = 91).

Figure 3

(A) Topographic maps of the early stimulus-locked P3 component (N = 102), (B) the late stimulus-locked P3 component, and (C) topographic maps of the response-locked MFN component (N = 91).

Figure 4

Picture type main effect for the early parietal baseline-to-peak P3 amplitude (A) and picture type main effect of the frontal baseline-to-peak MFN amplitude (B).

Figure 5

Early baseline-to-peak P3 amplitude for SI-perpetrator (SI-p) scores × Trait-BIS scores (low Trait-BIS/low SI-p: N = 18; low Trait-BIS/medium SI-p: N = 13; low Trait-BIS/high SI-p: N = 7; medium Trait-BIS/low SI-p: N = 10; medium Trait-BIS/medium SI-p: N = 10; medium Trait-BIS/high SI-p: N = 10; high Trait-BIS/low SI-p: N = 13; high Trait-BIS/medium SI-p: N = 8; high Trait-BIS/high SI-p: N = 13).

Figure 6

Fixed-links model for early P3 amplitudes across picture types (N = 85); i, intercept; s, slope; irr., irrelevant pictures; tar., target pictures; pro., probe pictures; significant coefficients are marked with “*” (p ≤ 0.05, two-tailed) and “**” (p ≤ 0.01, two-tailed). For convenience, numerical values of the completely standardized solution are only given for significant coefficients related to Trait-BIS (BIS), SI-perpetrator (SI-p), and the Trait-BIS × SI-perpetrator interaction (BIS × SI-p).

Figure 7

Fixed-links model for MFN-amplitudes across picture types (N = 85); i, intercept; s, slope; irr., irrelevant pictures; tar., target pictures; pro., probe pictures; significant coefficients are marked with “*” (p ≤ 0.05, two-tailed) and “**” (p ≤ 0.01, two-tailed). For convenience, numerical values of the completely standardized solution are only given for significant coefficients related to Trait-BIS (BIS), SI-perpetrator (SI-p), and the Trait-BIS × SI-perpetrator interaction (BIS × SI-p).