Fu Huijian, Qiu Wenwei, Ma Haiying, Ma Qingguo
School of Management, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, Guangdong, People's Republic of China.
Laboratory of Managerial Psychology and Behavior, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, Guangdong, People's Republic of China.
PLoS One. 2017 Aug 9;12(8):e0182892. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0182892. eCollection 2017.
Deceptive behavior is common in human social interactions. Researchers have been trying to uncover the cognitive process and neural basis underlying deception due to its theoretical and practical significance. We used Event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the neural correlates of deception when the participants completed a hazard judgment task. Pictures conveying or not conveying hazard information were presented to the participants who were then requested to discriminate the hazard content (safe or hazardous) and make a response corresponding to the cues (truthful or deceptive). Behavioral and electrophysiological data were recorded during the entire experiment. Results showed that deceptive responses, compared to truthful responses, were associated with longer reaction time (RT), lower accuracy, increased N2 and reduced late positive potential (LPP), suggesting a cognitively more demanding process to respond deceptively. The decrement in LPP correlated negatively with the increment in RT for deceptive relative to truthful responses, regardless of hazard content. In addition, hazardous information evoked larger N1 and P300 than safe information, reflecting an early processing bias and a later evaluative categorization process based on motivational significance, respectively. Finally, the interaction between honesty (truthful/deceptive) and safety (safe/hazardous) on accuracy and LPP indicated that deceptive responses towards safe information required more effort than deceptive responses towards hazardous information. Overall, these results demonstrate the neurocognitive substrates underlying deception about hazard information.
欺骗行为在人类社会互动中很常见。由于其理论和实践意义，研究人员一直在试图揭示欺骗背后的认知过程和神经基础。我们使用事件相关电位（ERP）来研究参与者在完成危险判断任务时欺骗行为的神经关联。向参与者展示传达或不传达危险信息的图片，然后要求他们辨别危险内容（安全或危险）并根据提示做出相应反应（真实或欺骗）。在整个实验过程中记录行为和电生理数据。结果表明，与真实反应相比，欺骗性反应与更长的反应时间（RT）、更低的准确率、增加的N2和降低的晚期正电位（LPP）相关，这表明欺骗性反应是一个认知要求更高的过程。无论危险内容如何，相对于真实反应，欺骗性反应中LPP的减少与RT的增加呈负相关。此外，危险信息比安全信息诱发更大的N1和P300，分别反映了早期加工偏差和基于动机意义的后期评估分类过程。最后，诚实（真实/欺骗）和安全性（安全/危险）在准确率和LPP上的交互作用表明，对安全信息的欺骗性反应比对危险信息的欺骗性反应需要更多的努力。总体而言，这些结果证明了关于危险信息欺骗行为的神经认知基础。
