Sociolinguistic Artifacts

This article studies how our linguistic styles differ when we are telling a lie. It uses a “computer based-text analysis program” to study whether study participants were telling the truth or not. It was able to correctly identify the liars and truth tellers at a rate of 61% overall. This article shows how liars showed “lower cognitive complexity, used fewer self-references and other-references, and used more negative emotion words.” [Published on 06-01-2002]