Duped: Truth-Default Theory and the Social Science of Lying and Deception
Erik W. Asp · Journal of Communication · 2020
During the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump, one command uttered by Trump was common and also revealing regarding the veracity of his speech content: “Believe me” (Viser, 2016). It is both a direction for listeners to inhibit any skepticism due to his insider knowledge and a tacit endorsement that the proposition in question is a known falsehood. As of the spring of 2020, the current tally of Trump’s false or misleading claims is over 18,000 in public statements according to the Washington Post (Kessler, Rizzo, and Kelly, 2020). Given the volume of misleading claims and outright deception in the post-truth world, it is critical for communication researchers to understand how and when individuals correctly detect deliberate deception during communication. Is there any truly effective way to identify when someone is lying to us? When should we believe the “believe me’s”? Unfortunately, the field of deception detection has largely been a confusing morass of weak, ephemeral evidence for deception behavioral cues based on theories of deception with tenuous logic. Until now. Timothy R. Levine’s Duped: Truth-Default Theory and the Social Science of Lying and Deception provides a clear examination of this morass, systematically explains the faulty assumptions in much of the extant research, and elucidates his new theory in a comprehensive yet straightforward manner. Levine bolsters his theory with a detailed and nuanced examination of extant deception detection data and the addition of his own rigorous, well-replicated research findings. The result is an engaging, personal journey through Levine’s establishment of a new Kuhnian paradigm for deception detection research.