Mind & behavior · 2021
Do people judge slower answers as less sincere?
Yes. In studies involving U.S. and British members of the public and French students, people judged slower answers as less sincere than faster ones across scenarios ranging from everyday conversations to police interrogations. The effect was smaller when the answer was socially undesirable or the delay could be attributed to mental effort. This concerns perceived sincerity, not evidence that a slow answer is a lie.
Details
The studies examined how response speed shapes judgments of sincerity. Across scenarios ranging from everyday conversations to police interrogations, people judged slower responses as less sincere than faster responses.
The findings suggest that people interpret a delay as a sign that someone is holding back an immediate, truthful thought and making up another answer. That describes the listener’s interpretation, not what the responder was necessarily doing.
Context mattered: a delay had less influence when the answer was socially undesirable or when mental effort could explain the pause. Explicitly telling people to ignore response speed also reduced its influence on their judgments; it did not establish that the influence disappeared.
The abstract does not report the size of these effects. The authors raise a possible concern for judicial settings: an innocent suspect’s hesitation could be mistaken for insincerity and, in turn, guilt. This is a potential implication, not a demonstrated effect on actual court verdicts.
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