Imposing cognitive load to elicit cues to deceit: inducing the reverse order technique naturally

In two experiments, we tested the hypotheses that (i) the difference between lying and truth telling will be greater when respondents report their stories in reverse order than in chronological order, and (ii) instructing respondents to recall their stories in reverse order will facilitate detecting deception. In Experiment 1, 31 professionals told the truth and lied about a route they took and did this by describing the route in chronological order and reverse order. The reverse-order answers contained more prominent cues to deceit than did the chronological-order answers. In Experiment 2, 68 observers read the transcripts of the verbal statements given in Experiment 1 and made veracity judgements. Observers detected deception better when judging the routes that respondents had described in reverse order than in chronological order. We recommend the use of the reverse order technique as a tool to detect deceit.