Does deception involve more cognitive control than truth-telling? Meta-analyses of N2 and MFN ERP studies

Abstract

A number of psychological theories propose that deception involves more cognitive control than truth-telling. Over the last decades, event-related potentials (ERPs) have been used to unravel this question, but the findings are mixed. To address this controversy, two meta-analyses were conducted to quantify the results of existing studies reporting N2 or medial frontal negativity (MFN) associated with deception. In total, 32 papers consisting of 1091 participants were included, which yielded 32 effect sizes for N2 and 7 effect sizes for MFN. We found that deception was associated with a more negative N2 and MFN than truth-telling with medium and large effect sizes (r =.25 and.51, respectively). We also found that the deception paradigm modulated the results (p =.043), but found no evidence for publication bias. Our findings indicate that deception involves more cognitive control than truth-telling. Our review also identifies gaps in this literature, including a need for more ERP studies using spontaneous deception.