By Jason Matthews
Image Credit: fizkes via Shutterstock / HDR tune by Universal-Sci
The time you take to respond to a question has a substantial effect on how truthful others perceive you to be. Research published by the American Psychological Association indicates that when someone pauses before answering a question, their answer is more likely to be interpreted as a fabrication. Furthermore, the longer the pause, the less likely the answer will be regarded as sincere.
The lead author of the study, Ignazio Ziano, explained in a press release that assessing the sincerity of others is a universal and essential part of social interactions. His team's research reveals that the amount of time it takes for someone to respond to a question is a major cue on which people judge how sincere that answer is.
Truth is irrelevant
Ziano and his team carried out 14 experiments involving approximately 7,500 people from three different countries (France, USA, and UK). The experiments required participants to either listen to audio recordings, watch videos, or read transcripts of someone being asked a question. Questions ranged from innocuous, such as, "do you like your spouse's cooking?" to "have you ever stolen something?" The hesitations in responses varied from immediate answers to varied pauses of up to 10 seconds regardless of whether they were truthful or not. The participants were then asked to score the subject's sincerity as they would see it. In all the experiments, the participants consistently scored people who took longer to answer as less believable.
However, interestingly enough, when questions were socially awkward, for example, someone asking their partner if they snore and the answer was "yes," the length of the hesitation did not seem to affect the perceived sincerity. The same was noted if the answer required some mental effort, such as remembering details of a past event or formulating an opinion into words.
Biased judgments
Ziano addressed the potential implications of this phenomenon; he mentioned that whenever people interact, they simultaneously assess each other's sincerity. According to him, the results of the study can be implemented to a wide range of interactions, varying from couples and friends bickering to workplace chit-chat. "Further, in job interviews and court hearings and trials, people are often tasked with judgments of sincerity. Here, too, response speed could play a part."
Ziano continued with an example: Imagine a hiring manager asking two job candidates, named Ann and Barb, whether they really know the programming language JavaScript, as they claim. Ann says yes immediately, while Barb replies yes after three seconds. The study results imply that in this circumstance, the hiring manager is more inclined to believe Ann than Barb, and thus probably more likely to hire Ann. In general, whenever a response requires an answer, such as in a job interview, delayed reactions can be perceived as less sincere.
The time you use to respond to questions might be a factor in a job interview - Image Credit: djile via Shutterstock / HDR tune by Universal-Sci
Ziano also notes that this observation might have potential consequences in high-stress situations such as in court cases, "It would be unfair for the responder, such as a crime suspect, if the response delay was misattributed to thought suppression or answer fabrication when it was in fact caused by a different factor, such as simply being distracted or thoughtful."
"Nevertheless, our research shows that, on the whole, a fast response seems to be perceived as more sincere, while a response that is delayed for even a couple of seconds may be considered a slow lie," said Ziano.
All in all, this research brings to the surface some important aspects of social interactions. Perhaps knowledge of our tendencies regarding the judgment of sincerity in others makes us better equipped to form balanced decisions.
The study has been published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and is listed below for those that would like a more detailed look.
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