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Crocodile Tears: Facial, Verbal and Body Language Behaviours Associated
With Genuine and Fabricated Remorse
Leanne ten Brinke
Sarah MacDonald
University of British Columbia
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Stephen Porter and Brian O’Connor
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This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
University of British Columbia
Emotional deception is a common behaviour that can have major consequences if undetected. For
example, the sincerity of an offender’s expressed remorse is an important factor in sentencing and parole
hearings. The present study was the first to investigate the nature of true and false remorse. We examined
facial, verbal and body language behaviours associated with emotional deception in videotaped accounts
of true personal transgressions accompanied by either genuine or falsified remorse. Analyses of nearly
300,000 frames indicated that descriptions of falsified remorse were associated with a greater range of
emotional expressions. Further, sequential analyses revealed that negative emotions were more commonly followed by other emotions—rather than a return to neutral emotion—in falsified versus sincere
remorse. Participants also exhibited more speech hesitations while expressing deceptive relative to
genuine remorse. In general, the results suggest that falsified remorse may be conceived as an emotionally turbulent display of deliberate, falsified expressions and involuntary, genuine, emotional leakage.
These findings are relevant to judges and parole board members who consider genuine remorse to be an
important factor in sentencing and release decisions.
duration and frequency of the [crimes], the criminal record of the
offender, the effects on the victim and the presence or absence of
. . . remorse” (R. v. B., 1990; R. v. W.W.M., 2006). In evaluating
remorse, judges often refer to the defendant’s demeanour: “The
appellant’s responses to questions posed him and his demeanour
showed that his main concern was for himself. . . I would have
expected some show of distress or anguish for having raped a
previously chaste young woman. The appellant showed no such
signs” (Balkissoon v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration),
2001). On the other hand, defendants who portray remorse for their
actions are considered to be good candidates for treatment and
rehabilitation: “[The defendant’s] remorse, guilt, and shame
should provide him with a strong motivation to work at changes
that will prevent future acts of violence” (R. v. Struve, 2007). It is
clear that impressions of remorse, based on demeanour, can influence the length of an offender’s sentence.
Apparent level of remorse also is an important consideration
when an offender is eligible for release upon parole. A primary
purpose of a parole interview is to provide the offender with the
opportunity to show the parole board that his/her attitude has
changed since he/she first arrived in prison (Ruback & Hopper,
1986). If an offender displays remorse during the interview, parole
board members may take this as a positive indication that the
offender is prepared for reintegration into the community. However, it is clear that many decisions are not well informed and risky
releases can occur when offenders manipulate parole decisionmakers. Ruback and Hopper (1986) investigated judgments made
by parole board members regarding the offenders’ success on
parole both before and after an interview with the parole candidates. Before the interview, the board members had access to the
Deception is a common aspect of human social interaction.
People admit to using deceit in 14% of emails, 27% of face-to-face
interactions and 37% of phone calls (Hancock, 2007), and lie twice
a day, on average (DePaulo, Kashy, Kirkendol, Wyer, & Epstein,
1996). While these acts of deception typically are minor, white lies
of little consequence (DePaulo et al., 1996), lies accompanied by
powerful emotions and false emotional displays can have major
consequences at individual and societal levels. For example, in
sentencing and parole hearings, the presence of remorse is a major
factor in decision-making; the perceived credibility of a defendant’s emotion during his/her testimony inform ultimate decisions
pertaining to their future. In the absence of genuine remorse, an
offender may be highly motivated to fake regret for his/her actions,
and the judge, jury or parole board member may be similarly
motivated to detect “crocodile tears”. In sentencing decisions,
judges are instructed to consider “the age of the victim, the
This article was published Online First February 8, 2011.
Leanne ten Brinke, Stephen Porter, and Brian O’Connor, University of
British Columbia, Kelowna, BC, Canada; Sarah MacDonald, Memorial
University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL, Canada
The authors would like to acknowledge the assistance of Brendan
Wallace and Natasha Korva for their contributions to this research. This
project was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada (SSHRC) through scholarships awarded to the first and
second authors, as well as research grants awarded to the third and fourth
authors.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Leanne
ten Brinke, University of British Columbia, Kelowna, BC, Canada. E-mail:
lbrinke@interchange.ubc.ca
51
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52
offenders’ files, detailing all relevant information required to make
a decision regarding the offenders’ release. During the interview,
parole board members gained information concerning the offender’s attitude and apparent level of remorse. Results indicated that
decisions made by board members became less accurate in predicting offenders’ success upon subsequent release, relative to
their judgments based on file information alone. Interestingly, this
indicates that the face-to-face contact with the offender impaired
the parole officers’ judgments, such that high-risk offenders were
more often released. Similarly, Porter, ten Brinke, and Wilson
(2009) explored the probability of offenders’ release as a function
of their level of psychopathy. Psychopathic offenders, known for
their remorselessness and ability to charm and manipulate others,
were approximately 2.5 times more likely to be granted conditional
release compared to non-psychopaths. As with Ruback and Hopper’s (1986) findings, one explanation is that the decision-makers
were duped by offenders during their interviews, persuaded by
false displays of remorse.
But what is remorse? Most of us— barring psychopaths—feel
remorseful for something we have done to another person (e.g.
cheating on our partner, lying to our parents). Yet, there has been
hardly any psychological research on the manifestation of emotional facial expressions during this common human experience
(cf. Keltner & Buswell, 1996). Remorse, or guilt, is defined as the
negative feeling resulting from the violation of one’s moral standards, and may arise from situations such as lying, neglecting a
friend or family member, cheating, or failure at a particular duty
(Keltner & Buswell, 1996; Tangney & Dearing, 2002). Feelings of
guilt occur particularly in situations where the regrettable action
was controllable by the transgressor (Tracy & Robins, 2006).
Although Izard (1977) and Keltner & Buswell (1996) suggest that
a single universal expression does not represent remorse, no empirical investigations to date have considered examining the combination of universal emotional expressions associated with this
affective state. Further, no studies have examined the potential
emotional expression differences between genuine and fabricated
remorse, reflecting the paucity of research surrounding colloquial
ideas about emotional deception more generally (Porter & ten
Brinke, 2010). The issue of whether “crocodile tears” are identifiable has received no empirical attention.
Theory and research suggest that various behavioural cues
associated with deception do exist (see Porter & ten Brinke,
2010). In theory, the presentation of liars and truth-tellers
should differ because of the elevated arousal, cognitive load and
behavioural control involved in fabricating a personal account
or feelings (Vrij, 2008). The liar is forced to avoid betraying the
deception by controlling his/ her feelings of guilt or excitement,
monitoring his/her words and keeping the story straight, while
supplying sufficient detail to appear credible but not so much as
to lead to a failure in recalling and maintaining the falsified
details. While telling the story, the liar must monitor his/ her
facial expressions (sometimes having to conceal or falsify an
emotion) and body language. This necessary “multi-tasking”
should reduce the level of conscious control the liar has over
each behavioural channel, and increase the amount of relative
“leakage” from one or the other(s), depending on the where
he/she is devoting relative degrees of effort (Porter & ten
Brinke, 2010).
Facial Cues to Emotional Deception
Given that the face is the primary focus during interpersonal
interaction, a wise liar might devote particular attention to controlling his/her facial expression. We rapidly “read” faces to decide
whether a stranger is friend or foe, make personality assessments,
and inform the course of our interactions (Fowler, Lilienfeld &
Patrick, 2009; ten Brinke & Porter, 2009; Willis & Todorov,
2006). Thus, deceptive individuals must maintain their duplicity
by falsifying emotional expressions concordant with the lie, and
suppressing “leakage” of their true emotions (Ekman & Friesen,
1975). For example, a deceptive employee must convincingly
express sadness as he explains to his boss that he will need to miss
work to attend his aunt’s funeral out of town, simultaneously
suppressing excitement about his real plans to extend a vacation
with friends. Given the complex musculature of the face, and the
heavy cognitive load associated with such a task, it is not surprising that expression of genuine and falsified emotions can be
perceptibly different.
False facial expressions were first studied in the nineteenth
century by Duchenne (1862/1990) who examined the muscle actions associated with real and false smiles. Using electrical stimulation of facial muscles, he noted that a genuine happiness expression involves not only the contraction of the zygomatic major
muscle which upturns the mouth corners into a smile, but also the
orbicularis oculi which creates crow’s feet around the eye. This
observation was later validated by Ekman, Davidson, and Friesen
(1990). A follower of Duchenne’s work, Darwin (1872) later
noted: “A man when moderately angry, or even when enraged,
may command the movements of his body, but. . .those muscles of
the face which are least obedient to the will, will sometimes alone
betray a slight and passing emotion” (p. 79). He proposed that
some facial actions associated with strong emotion cannot be
inhibited voluntarily and that the same muscle actions cannot be
engaged voluntarily during emotional simulation. Implicit in this
statement is the suggestion that leakage of one’s true emotion will
be proportional to the intensity of the felt emotion. Collectively,
these statements form the inhibition hypothesis (Ekman, 2003a).
Micro-expressions—a derivation of Darwin’s idea—are defined as
short-lived leakage of one’s true emotion manifested as an emotional expression lasting 1/25th to 1/5th of a second (Ekman, 1992;
see also Haggard & Isaacs, 1966). Despite the popularity of both
Darwin’s and Ekman’s hypotheses, little research has been conducted to substantiate these ideas.
In a direct examination of Darwin’s (1872) hypothesis, Porter
and ten Brinke (2008) investigated the nature of facial expressions
accompanying four types of falsified or concealed universal emotions: happiness, sadness, fear and disgust. Participants viewed
powerful emotional images, responding with a genuine or convincing but false expression while being judged by a naı¨ ve observer.
False expressions, in response to emotionally provocative images
were either simulated (an unfelt emotion was expressed) or
masked (a false expression replaced that of the felt emotion).
When the 697 videotaped expressions were exhaustively analyzed
(each 1/30th second frame for more than 100,000 frames), involuntary leakage was found to be ubiquitous. No participant was able
to falsify each emotion without such betrayals on at least one
occasion. Emotional leakage was significantly more likely to occur, and lasted longer, in masked expressions than genuine. How-
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53
ever, the presence and duration of emotional leakage were not
significantly different across genuine and simulated emotional
expressions. In general, negative emotions (sadness, fear, disgust)
were more difficult to falsify than positive (happiness), and resulted in greater emotional leakage. Despite the presence of these
indicators, naı¨ ve judges performed only slightly above chance
when attempting to discriminate genuine and falsified expressions
(see also Hess & Kleck, 1994). Previous studies also have found
differences in the duration, onset, and offset times between genuine and false expressions of happiness and disgust (e.g. Frank,
Ekman, & Friesen, 2005; Hess & Kleck, 1990). Although no
research to date has examined potential sequential differences in
genuine versus deceptive emotional displays, it may be inferred
that emotions related to the act of deception could follow falsified
expressions. For example, Ekman (1992) noted that deceivers
might not anticipate the intensity of emotions related to the act of
lying, resulting in signs of shame or duping delight on the face
following falsified emotions.
Verbal and Body Language Cues to Deception
Empirical evidence suggests that there may be value in attending to verbal cues in catching emotional lies such as remorse
narratives (e.g. Porter & Yuille, 1995; Vrij, 2008). The broad
deception literature suggests that, relative to truth-tellers, liars are
more likely to speak slower and provide less detail (DePaulo et al.,
2003; Porter, Yuille, & Lehman, 1999). Liars also are more likely
to hesitate, including more ‘ums’ and ‘ers’ in their stories relative
to genuine individuals (DePaulo et al., 2003; Vrij, 2008). Further,
linguistic patterns can provide indications of dishonest speech
(Hancock, Curry, Goorha, & Woodworth, 2008). Research in
which participants wrote about their views on personally significant topics (e.g. abortion) indicated that deceptive and truthful
narratives were discriminated with a mean accuracy of 67% based
on linguistic characteristics alone (Newman, Pennebaker, Berry, &
Richards, 2003). Specifically, liars tended to use fewer first-person
pronouns and references to others.
The existing literature substantiates that there also are associations between body language and deception. In their meta-analysis,
DePaulo et al. (2003) found that a reduction in illustrator use was
among the most powerful indicators of deception. Other empirically supported indicators include an increase in selfmanipulations and blink rate (specifically during emotional masking) (Porter, Doucette, Earle, & MacNeil, 2008; Porter & ten
Brinke, 2008). While gaze aversion is widely regarded as a reliable
cue to deceit, it has not found empirical support (Global Deception
Research Team, 2006). In fact, the opposite may be true; liars may
make greater eye contact than truth-tellers in a conscious attempt
to appear convincing (Vrij, 2008).
The Present Study
The present study investigated potential facial, verbal and body
language cues to deception in descriptions of true autobiographical
transgressions associated with genuine and falsified remorse. Differences in the presence and duration of emotional expressions
were expected to occur when participants described their genuine
versus their deceptive feelings of remorse (i.e. when participants
said, “I felt really guilty”, or something similar).
Hypothesis 1: The presence of sadness was expected to
dominate genuine, relative to deceptive descriptions of feelings. Deceptive descriptions of felt emotion, on the other
hand, were expected to be characterized by the presence of
various discordant emotional expressions, such as happiness
or anger.
Hypothesis 2: Similarly, genuine emotional descriptions were
expected to be accompanied by longer durations of sadness,
whereas deceptive descriptions would include longer durations of happiness and anger.
Such differences were not expected when emotional presence
and duration were collated across the entirety of each event description because most of each falsified remorse narrative was
comprised of truthful event details. Further, we examined the
presence of micro-expressions (Ekman, 1992) as a potential cue to
emotional deceit, but refrained from posing a hypothesis.
We also suspected that the sequences of facial expressions that
individuals display when they are being deceptive might differ
from the naturally occurring sequences of facial expressions that
occur during genuine remorse. The duping delight, embarrassment
or urge to express one’s genuine emotions may result in (genuine)
discordant emotions following (falsified) sadness expressions. To
our knowledge, this possibility has not been examined in previous
research. We therefore conducted sequential analyses on the facial
expressions data.
Hypothesis 3: It was expected that (falsified) negative expressions would be more often followed by positive expressions
(emotional leakage) during false remorse, compared to genuine regret.
In addition to emotional facial variables, verbal and non-verbal
cues to deception were examined.
Hypothesis 4: Verbal indicators, including slowed speech
rate, increased speech hesitations, and fewer self- and otherreferences, were expected to be associated with deceptive
remorse.
Hypothesis 5: Various body language behaviours (decreased
use of illustrators, increased use of self-manipulators, increased blink rate and potentially, decreased gaze aversion)
were examined as cues to falsified remorse.
Method
Participants
Undergraduate students (n ⫽ 31) in a Canadian university
participated in return for course credit points. Participants were 20
females and 11 males and had a mean age of 21.67 (SD ⫽ 4.34).
Three additional naı¨ve, undergraduate research assistants judged
the veracity of participant displays of remorse. The presence of an
observer was intended primarily to increase the realism of the task
and the motivation of the participant.
54
Apparatus
The testing room was arranged such that the participant was
seated in a chair facing video-recording equipment. Two digital
video cameras, recording at a rate of 30 frames per second, were
used to film the participant, capturing footage of the participant’s
entire body and a close-up of the participant’s face, respectively.
The experimenter and a naı¨ve judge were seated on either side (left
and right) of the video camera, facing the participant.
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Procedure
Upon arriving for the study, all participants and judges completed an informed consent form and were provided with a definition of remorse, as well as common situations associated with
this emotion, as outlined by Keltner and Buswell (1996). Participants were asked to tell the experimenter about a true non-criminal
event in their life that made them feel intensely and genuinely
remorseful, in as much detail as possible. Subsequently, the participants were asked to complete a filler-task questionnaire and a
short demographic survey (age, gender, ethnicity and education
level). Participants also were asked to describe a similar true event
(counterbalanced order) for which they felt no/little remorse, but
were asked to convincingly feign remorse for their actions. For
example, if the participant described an instance of cheating for
which he/she genuinely felt remorseful, he/she was asked to think
of another time he/she cheated but did not feel remorseful to
describe with falsified remorse. Participants were told to choose
events that occurred within 6 months of one another to reduce
differential effects of memory decay or emotional intensity on
narratives. Subsequently, participants were asked to indicate their
level of remorse for each transgression on a scale from 1 (not at all
remorseful) to 7 (highly remorseful). This served as a manipulation
check to ensure the two autobiographical events were indeed
associated with different levels of felt remorse. Naı¨ve judges
estimated the veracity of remorse in each description (genuine or
falsified) and rated their confidence in that decision. The presence
of a naı¨ ve judge during recording acted as social motivation,
encouraging participants to act convincingly remorseful. At the
completion of the study, all participants were fully debriefed about
its purposes.
relatively recent addition of contempt (Ekman & Friesen, 1975;
Ekman et al., 1987). A primary (graduate student) coder, blind to
veracity condition, examined all narratives. In order to examine
emotion in the upper and lower face separately, all 149,331 frames
were coded twice (once with attention to the upper face, and again
for the lower) for a total of 298,662 analyzed frames.
Body language variables examined included: rate of illustrators,
rate of self-manipulations, proportion of time spent averting gaze
and blink rate. Illustrators were defined as any movement/gesture
of the arms and/or hands, designed to illustrate what the participant
was saying. Self-manipulations were any instance where the participant touched/scratched his/her hand, head or body (Porter et al.,
2008). Verbal variables coded included: speech rate, rate of speech
hesitations (e.g. the use of “um” or “uh”, etc.), proportion of
self-references (e.g. “I”, “we”, “my”) and proportion of reference
to others (e.g. “him”, “she”, “they”).
Coding Reliability
Facial emotion variables. Sixteen (26%) of the narratives
were independently coded by a second individual (a trained undergraduate, blind to veracity and hypotheses) to assess inter-rater
reliability. The raters agreed on emotion codes for 84.07% of the
48,071 frames that were coded for the purposes of reliability. The
duration (measured in number of frames) of emotional expressions, as coded by the two individuals, were correlated at r (248) ⫽
.99, p ⬍ .001. Further, no mean difference between raters was
revealed, p ⬎ .05. Inter-rater reliability on the duration variable
was “excellent”, as defined by Cicchetti and Sparrow (1981) and
Fleiss (1981). Agreement on the dichotomously coded presence/
absence of emotional expressions also was high, Kappa ⫽ .70, p ⬍
.001, with agreement on 87.90% of all codes.
Verbal and non-verbal variables. A secondary coder reexamined 14 (23%) of the narratives for verbal and non-verbal
cues to assess inter-rater reliability. Verbal and non-verbal variables coded by the primary and secondary coder were highly
correlated, r ⫽ 0.60 – 0.99, ps ⬍ .05. Further, means were not
significantly different between coders, all ps ⬎ .05. Inter-rater
reliability was at least “good”, and more often “excellent” (as
defined by Cicchetti & Sparrow (1981) and Fleiss (1981)) on all
indices.
Results
Coding Procedures
Blind (to veracity) coding was conducted for all facial, verbal
and body language variables. Emotional facial expressions occurring during each narrative were coded using the procedure developed by Porter and ten Brinke (2008). Training involves facial
musculature recognition, memorization of facial action units associated with universal emotions, and identification of universal
emotions. This training is based on the Pictures of Facial Affect
(universal emotions depicted in photographs; Ekman & Friesen,
1976) and the Facial Action Coding System (Ekman, Friesen, &
Hagar, 2002). See Porter and ten Brinke (2008) for further information on coding procedures and training. Each frame (1/30th of
a second) of the narratives was coded for the presence, duration
and sequence of universal emotional expressions in the upper and
lower portion of the face independently. Universal emotions include happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, surprise and the
Manipulation Check
To ensure that each narrative was associated with different
levels of remorse (e.g. high remorse in the genuine condition and
low remorse in the fabricated condition), a paired samples t-test
was conducted for the participant ratings of each narrative. As
expected, participants reported significantly more remorse for their
genuine (M ⫽ 6.09, SD ⫽ 0.65) than fabricated (M ⫽ 2.06, SD ⫽
0.77) remorse event, t(30) ⫽ 24.61, p ⬍ .001, d ⫽ 6.29, 95% CI
[3.70, 4.37].
Facial Cues to Falsified Remorse
Descriptions of felt emotions. Although the narratives were
unstructured, the majority of participants included a description of