This study examined whether deception in facial expressions and micro-expressions shows universal cues across cultures. Fifty participants from diverse backgrounds completed a survey involving micro-expression detection and judging the truthfulness of statements. The results found a weak positive correlation between micro-expression detection scores and the ability to detect deceptive statements. Additionally, Asian participants performed significantly worse at detecting deception compared to American participants, suggesting cultural differences exist. The study provides initial evidence that some deception cues may be universal, but culture also influences detection abilities. Continued cross-cultural research could help understand deception and nonverbal communication between groups.

1. Deception in Facial Expressions and Micro-Expressions
Across Culture
Does deception in nonverbal communication show evidence of universal cues across cultures?
INTRODUCTION
Deception is the action of deceiving someone by either lying or misleading
a group or an individual. Most would think negatively of deception when a
blatant lie; however, would concealing a sad emotion in a cheering crowd
and projecting a positive smile be considered the same as a lie? When
understanding deception, it is important to understand why there would
be a need for deception, and what would be the outcome of revealing the
truth?
There are many ways to detect deception, especially in nonverbal
communication such as facial expressions and micro-expressions. Facial
expressions are key to seeing evidence of an individual’s emotion.
Studying facial expression is important because they will be determining
clues of sincerity or falsified emotional reactions. Different muscles are
used for sincere smiles than fake smiles. Therefore, it is important to be
able to accurately distinguish between the two. Micro-expressions are
brief, but when caught, they show whether an individual is concealing
their true emotion, and this is when the detector must ask why they would
want to deceive and what could they be hiding in terms of deception.
METHODS
The current study contained fifty participants from a diverse population.
They were selected by using convenience sampling and random
assignment. The participants filled out a survey consisted of three parts.
• In the first section, the participant will fill out a questionnaire containing
open-ended questions. The open-ended questions will be related to the
participants nationality, age, and sexual orientation. Therefore, allows
the participant to remain anonymous throughout the study.
• In the second part, we will use the Micro-Expression Trainer app, which
displays the seven universal emotions (sad, contempt, disgust,
happiness, anger, sadness, and surprise). All participant will guess which
micro-expressions are given in the app. The app will give 10 faces that
briefly show a micro-expression. At the end of the exercise, a score out
of 10 will be given on how many they got correct. The app will be used in
order to collect data, and predict the results of the next exercise; the
higher the participant scores on the micro-expression app, the better
they will score in detecting deceptive statements in the next video
exercise.
• Finally, the participant will be shown a video of a volunteer telling
truthful and deceptive statements. The participants will then have to
guess which statement is a lie. Upon gaining the results, we will debrief
the participants on the study to why we are conducting the study, their
results of the study, and any further questions they might have regarding
the study
RESULTS
A Pearson’s Correlation was computed to assess the relationship
between the Micro-Expression Trainer score (MET) and the statement
deception detection score (ScoreA). The scores given by the MET and
scores from the ScoreA had a weak positive correlation, [r(.152), n= 50,
p= .293].
(Figure 1)
CONCLUSION
REFERENCES
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and Personality: An International Journal.
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interactions, 39(1). doi:10.1007/ s10919-014-0190-4
• Ekman, P. (2001). Telling lies: Clues to deceit in the marketplace, politics, and marriage. New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, Inc.
• Erez, M. (2011). Cross-cultural and global issues in organizational psychology. In APA handbook of
industrial and organizational psychology, Vol 3: Maintaining, expanding, and contracting the organization
(pp. 807-854). doi:10.1037/12171-023
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mediated deceptive communication. Paper presented at the Pacific Asia Conference on Information
Systems. Retrieved from http://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/etd/3087
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Karlskrona, Sweden. Retrieved from http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/
diva2:832234/FULLTEXT01.pdf
• Leins, D. J, Fisher, R., & Ross, S.(2013). Exploring liars' strategies for creating deceptive reports. Legal and
Criminological Psychology, 18(1), 141-151. doi:10.1111/ j.2044-8333.2011.02041.x.
Deception can be detected in many ways. However, this study focused on
detecting deception through universal facial cues. The results showed a
weak positive correlation for universal cues across culture. Since we found
a significant difference between Americans and Asians, the overall
nationality groups were successful in detecting deception given the facial
micro-expressions. It is worth continued research because learning more
about cross-cultural nonverbal communication, and deception will give a
broader understanding of other cultures. This may lead people to feel
more certain if they are behaving acceptably to people from other cultures
and reduce misunderstandings. The diverse environment provides an
number of participants to observe and investigate the subtle behavior
cues that are universal as well as culture-specific.
A One-way ANOVA was then used to assess the relationship between the
participants’ Nationality and ScoreA. There was a statistically significant
difference between groups as determined by One-way ANOVA (F(5,44) =
2.557, p = .041). A Tukey post-hoc test revealed that the Asian group was
statistically significant compared with the American group (.15066, p =
.05). There were statistically significant differences between the Asian
and American groups (p = .05).
(Figure 2)
Blaize Soakai, Tonje Nilsen, Kathryn Roe, Billy Ramirez
PSY 2200 - Dr. Hall
Hawaii Pacific University
bsoakai@my.hpu.edu
tnilsen1@my.hpu.edu
kroe@my.hpu.edu
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
RESULTS
(Figure 1)
(Figure 2)
Thank you Dr. Hall for being the wind beneath our wings. You are an
inspiration and our biggest hero.