Lower resting heart rate predicts the ability to detect deception: The rate indicates the level of autonomous arousal, the level of arousal influences information processing

Resting heart rate: A physiological predicator of lie detection ability. Geoffrey Duran, Isabelle Tapiero, George A. Michael. Physiology & Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2018.01.002

Highlights
•    An investigation of the ability to detect deception is proposed.
•    Resting heart rate predicts the ability to detect deception.
•    Resting heart rate indicates the level of autonomous arousal.
•    The level of arousal influences information processing.
•    Resting heart rate helps to distinguish between poor and good deception detectors.

Abstract: This study explored a psychophysiological measure, Resting Heart Rate (RHR), as a predicator of the ability to detect lies. RHR was recorded for 1 min and followed by a deception detection task in which participants were required to judge 24 videos of people describing a real-life event (50% truthful, 50% deceptive). Multiple regression analyses showed that, among other individual characteristics, only RHR predicted the ability to distinguish truth from lies. Importantly, the prediction was negative. This result suggests that the higher the RHR, the worse the detection of lies. Since the RHR is considered to be a physiological trait indexing autonomous arousal, and since high-arousal states can lead to restricted attentional resources, we suggest that limited selection and utilization of cues due to restricted attention is the reason why higher RHR leads to poor deception detection.

Keywords: Detection of deception; Resting heart rate; Arousal; Cue utilization theory