When answering a question, your silence might say more than your words. A new psychology study has found pausing before replying, even for just a few seconds, can make you seem more insincere or dishonest. That perception (感知) of dishonesty might not be too inaccurate, either. Numerous studies suggest people are slower to respond when they are not being truthful, possibly because it takes more mental work to block a truthful response or fabricate (编造) an alternative.
What's been less clear is how well our lies have been fooling people. Some studies suggest delayed answers come across as insincere to the listener. Others find no relationship between the two, and still more have found the opposite: A bit of hesitation increases our perception of sincerity. These findings are inconsistent and confusing. They are also mostly based on correlations. Even the few studies that have actually looked at causal relationships often didn't consider confusing factors that could also give away a liar or an insincere speaker.
The new research seeks to improve some of those limitations by examining thousands of people under a variety of conditions. Together, it involves more than 7, 500 individuals in a total of 14 experiments. On the whole, the authors found an immediate response was perceived as more sincere, while a delayed response, even a delay as brief as two seconds, was seen as more insincere. "Evaluating other people's sincerity is an important part of social interactions." says consumer behaviour researcher Ignazio Ziano.
"It would be unfair for the responder, such as a crime suspect, if the response delay was misattributed to (错误地归因于) thought suppression (抑制) or answer fabrication when it was in fact caused by a different factor, such as simply being distracted or thoughtful." explains Ziano.
