Distinguishing which information is true and which is false can be vital for us as human beings.
The modern realities of world mutual distrust at a state level highlights the relevance of lie detection as never before. Some researchers assume that better lie-detection abilities may lay beyond our conscious (e.g., DePaulo & Morris, 2004; Reinhard et al., 2013; ten Brinke et al., 2014). According to dual process theories (see, e.g., Gawronski et al., 2021), cognitive processes (perception, decision making, etc.) can run in two different modes: controlled, or explicit, and automatic, or implicit. Implicit attention, memory, thinking can perform beyond a person’s awareness, but have a significant
influence on behavioral outcomes, decisions, and final choices.
When applied to deception detection, implicit cognition reveals a new perspective on this phenomenon. Limited research exists, which explores the implicit part of lie detection performance, and results of the research are contradictory (see, e.g., Reinhard et al., 2013; but Moi & Shanks, 2015). A closer look into these studies may help to explain such inconsistency and uncover weaknesses.
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the extant research on implicit lie detection and those possibly connected with the topic (e.g., indirect or/and unconscious deception detection). To do so, the methodology of a critical literature review is applied.
The results reveal that the theoretical part of implicit cognition is not properly considered in the (deception related) studies and results in confusion in terminology and/or definitions.
The lack of a strong theoretical basis has also led to methodological issues and conflicting findings. Some authors (e.g., Sporer & Ulatowska, 2021) consider indirect self-reported measures (e.g., ‘Does the person seems to you thinking hard?’) as implicit, which contradicts the basic requirement for automaticity of implicit measures (see Gawronski et al., 2020). It means they are exploring an explicit construct rather than an implicit one. It is relevant to conclude (at this preliminary stage) that most of the studies analyzed have a clear and strong understanding of the scientific representation of explicit deception detection, but a poor consideration of the implicit cognition part, including implicit measures.
Elimination of this shortcoming can help to revise the results of previous experiments and set a new vector for implicit deception detection research, such that it does not remain at its infancy.
Keywords: Implicit lie detection, unconscious processing, indirect deception detection, intuitive pathway.
