Elsevier

Neuropsychologia

Volume 61, August 2014, Pages 113-122
Neuropsychologia

Investigating socio-cognitive processes in deception: A quantitative meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.06.001Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Deception is defined as a social interactive phenomenon.

  • Research to date, however, has mainly focused on executive control during deception.

  • We investigated the influence of the experimental protocol on the neural correlates.

  • Activity in social and moral cognition areas reflected deception in social interaction.

Abstract

Recent neuroimaging studies have found a broad network of brain regions involved in deception, including the prefrontal cortex, insula, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and inferior parietal lobule (IPL). Although deception can be conceptualized as the attempt to deliberately cause another person to accept a false belief, research to date has mainly focused on executive control processes when participants are instructed to lie under certain conditions. Recently, more ecologically valid and interactive experimental paradigms have been used in which subjects were also requested to take the perspective of another person, read his or her intentions, and make a self-determined decision to deceive that person and break a moral rule. To investigate the influence of these socio-cognitive processes on the neural network of deception, we performed a quantitative meta-analysis combining the data from 416 participants across 22 fMRI and two PET studies. Based on the description of the experimental paradigm, studies were divided in social interactive and non-interactive deception studies. Increased activation in the dorsal ACC, the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ)/angular gyrus, and the bilateral temporal pole (TP) was found to be greater in social interactive than in non-interactive deception. These results demonstrate the important role of perspective taking, theory of mind, and moral reasoning processes in deception as well as conflict processing. In addition to the role of executive control processes determined by previous meta-analyses, our findings show the importance of these socio-cognitive processes in deception and give new insight into the function and interpretation of the brain regions involved.

Introduction

Deception is a ubiquitous human behavior that plays an important role in everyday life and occurs in a number of different situations. Although there is much debate with regard to a generally accepted definition, we refer to a classic definition by Zuckerman, DePaulo, and Rosenthal (1981, p. 3) who operationalize deception as “a deliberate act that is intended to foster in another person a belief or understanding which the deceiver considers false.” This definition hallmarks two important components of deception: first, deception occurs in a social setting involving at least two interacting people. Second, it requires the willful decision of one of these people to intentionally deceive the interaction partner. Misleading another person and inducing a false belief is a conscious and volitional act that involves a number of socio-cognitive processes such as thinking about the beliefs and expectations of that person (Adenzato & Ardito, 1999). These processes are generally referred to as ‘Theory of Mind’ (ToM; Mar, 2011).

A number of recent neuroimaging studies investigated the neural correlates of deception. In these studies, however, the development of suitable experimental paradigms to provoke dishonest behavior remains challenging. To prompt dishonest responses, participants in many studies were instructed to answer incorrectly under one condition and to tell the truth under another condition. Examples of such experimental paradigms are the Guilty Knowledge Test (GKT; Lykken, 1959) and other memory recognition tasks in which participants are instructed to deny that they have previously seen certain stimuli. The GKT, specifically, is a method often used in polygraphic interrogation to detect whether a person has knowledge of certain crime details that would only be known to a suspect involved in that crime. Langleben et al. (2002), for instance, used the GKT in combination with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In this study, participants were given playing cards and asked to hide one of the playing cards in their pocket. Later on in the scanner, participants were instructed to deny any knowledge of that hidden card. Denial was reflected in increased activity in brain regions such as the superior frontal cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the premotor and motor cortex, as well as the anterior parietal cortex. Gamer, Bauermann, Stoeter, and Vossel (2007) also used the GKT and found stronger activation in the right insula and the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) in response to already presented stimuli compared to unknown and irrelevant items. In a similar study conducted by Kozel, Padgett, and George (2004b), participants had to find money hidden under a certain object and were instructed to lie about this location later. Activations in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and the ACC were found for deceptive compared to truthful responses. The involvement of the prefrontal cortex and the ACC in these and other studies provides evidence that a number of prefrontal executive control functions are involved in deception (e.g., directed attention, working memory, conflict processing, and inhibitory control; Abe, 2009, Abe, 2011, Christ et al., 2009, Gombos, 2006, Spence et al., 2004).

To make the experimental deception paradigms more ecologically valid, some authors also used autobiographic and emotionally salient stimulus material (e.g., Ganis et al., 2009, Ito et al., 2011, Lee et al., 2010, Nuñez et al., 2005) such as embarrassing autobiographic episodes (Spence, Kaylor-Hughes, Farrow, & Wilkinson, 2008). Ganis, Kosslyn, Stose, Thompson, and Yurgelun-Todd (2003), moreover, investigated two types of lying: spontaneous lying and well-rehearsed lying during which participants did not only give untruthful responses but were also required to construct a coherent story. Some authors also tried to induce a moral conflict, feelings of guilt, or anxiety of being detected by using sophisticated cover stories and mock crime paradigms (Kozel et al., 2009a, Kozel et al., 2009b, Mohamed et al., 2006, Phan et al., 2005). To make the deception task more interactive, Sip et al. (2010), for instance, measured neural activation while participants played a dice game in which deceiving the other player is an integral part. The authors reported that the decision to make a false claim relative to telling the real number of the dice was related to activity in the premotor and parietal cortex, whereas activity in the fronto-polar cortex was found during both kinds of behavior. Abe, Suzuki, Mori, Itoh, and Fujii (2007) compared falsifying truthful responses with really deceiving the interrogator and found increased activity in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) during falsifying truthful responses compared to real deception. Under a more realistic deception condition, in contrast, the ventromedial and orbitofrontal cortex as well as the amygdala were more strongly activated. These results support the notion that giving untruthful responses might be related to executive functions, whereas intentionally deceiving another person in social interaction additionally involves emotional and socio-cognitive processes. In a study by Greene and Paxton (2009), participants were not explicitly instructed to deceive but had the opportunity to cheat on the experimenter and get more money by lying about their performance. Individuals who behaved dishonestly exhibited increased activity in control-related regions of the prefrontal cortex, such as the bilateral DLPFC, under both conditions when lying and when behaving honestly. This control-related brain activity was not found in honest subjects.

As can be seen from this literature review, the neural correlates of deception depend on the task and the stimulus material used. Nevertheless, Christ and colleagues showed in a quantitative meta-analysis that there is a common neural network activated during deception (Christ et al., 2009). This network comprises the bilateral IFG, left middle frontal gyrus, insula, the right ACC, the inferior parietal lobule (IPL), as well as the intraparietal sulcus. This previous meta-analysis investigated the contribution of executive control during deception. The authors, specifically, compared the neural correlates of deception with meta-analytic maps showing activity associated with three different aspects of executive control: working memory, inhibitory control, and task switching. This analysis revealed some overlap between the deception network and the networks involved in executive control. However, not all activation clusters could be related to the three executive functions. The activity in the IPL, for instance, showed no overlap with any one of the three executive control functions. Since the IPL was one of the three big bilateral clusters in the deception network, this result indicates that further processes might play a role during deception.

As mentioned earlier, deception can be conceptualized as a phenomenon that involves socio-cognitive processes such as inferring another person׳s mental state and being aware of social norms. Based on the definition of deception, which emphasizes that a social setting involving at least two interacting people is crucial for deception, in the present study, we aimed at specifying which parts of the neural network involved in deception are recruited by socio-cognitive processes, in addition to the previously identified executive functions. Therefore, we conducted a quantitative meta-analysis including 30 neuroimaging studies (and 32 contrasts) and contrasted non-interactive experimental protocols with social interactive studies, that is, studies in which participants were actually required to deceive an interaction partner.

We hypothesized that ecologically more valid deception paradigms involving a real counterpart would reveal increased activation in brain regions associated with ToM and social cognition. In particular, we expected a differentiation within the deception network in brain regions that are related to social cognition and other regions that are relevant for executive control processes. Brain regions that have been associated with social cognition (e.g., ToM and moral reasoning) are the medial prefrontal cortex, the precuneus, the posterior superior temporal sulcus/temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), the temporal pole (TP), and the amygdala (for reviews about the neural correlates of social cognition and ToM, see Mar, 2011, Saxe and Kanwisher, 2003, Saxe et al., 2006). The TPJ found in studies investigating social cognition is very similar to the IPL region reported in the previous meta-analysis by Christ et al. (2009) that could not be related to executive functions during deception.

Section snippets

Study selection

Peer-reviewed journals in PubMED and Web of Science were searched in February and March 2012 for neuroimaging studies on deception using the keywords [lying OR denial OR lie OR deceptive OR deception OR conceal OR malingering OR dishonest OR cheating] AND [fmri OR magnetic resonance imaging]. In addition, we searched the reference lists from all identified articles for further relevant studies.

Inclusion criteria for fMRI and positron emission tomography (PET) studies were: (1) healthy adult

The neural correlates of deception

In a first step, we computed a meta-analysis including all studies investigating deception comprising 32 imaging contrasts (deceptive vs. truthful responses) in total. This analysis revealed a network of brain regions showing greater activation for deception across all studies (Table 2 and Fig. 1). We found a big cluster with bilateral local peak activations in the frontal lobes including ACC, IFG, and insula. We also found bilateral activity in the IPL, and the left precentral/middle frontal

Discussion

In the present meta-analysis, we aimed at investigating the neural correlates of socio-cognitive processes during deception combining the data from 416 participants across 21 fMRI and 2 PET studies. In particular, we performed a meta-analysis comparing social interactive with non-interactive deception paradigms. Defined as “social interactive” were studies in which an interaction partner was present or mentioned and subjects had to think about how to best deceive the interaction partner. Our

Summary

A number of studies investigating the neural correlates of deception have shown that deception is a complex and cognitive demanding task that requires executive control and working memory. Deception, however, cannot be considered as consisting of cognitive components only. In the present meta-analysis, we took into account whether a real interaction partner was involved and found increased activation in the dorsal ACC, the right TPJ and the bilateral TP. The latter two brain regions have been

Acknowledgments

This research was financially supported by the Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion” and the Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion (D.I.N.E.) at Freie Universität Berlin, which is funded by the DFG (German Research Foundation). We would like to thank Salome Lütolf for help with literature research and data preparation, as well as the ten expert raters from the Cluster of Excellence “Languages of Emotion,” the Department of Education and Psychology at Freie Universität Berlin, and

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