Published Paper Details:

Does mood can cause inability to detect deception? Are the different states of mood can influence our tendency to believe or disbelieve another person? Based on past and recent work on deceptive communication mood and social cognition, in our research we predicted and found that negative mood increased and positive mood decreased our skepticism ability to detect deception. After inducing various mood conditions by showing positive, neutral or negative films, participants were instructed to view deceptive or truthful interviews with of actors who denied about committing a theft. The participants were told to make Judgments of the target person in video is guilty of the theft and choose "guilty" or "not guilty if they believe the person is not lying take their denial as truth as "not guilty". As predicted, negative mood condition increased judges' skepticism towards the targets, on the other hand judges in positive mood condition were found to be more trusting and gullible. The importance of findings in everyday judgments of trust and the detection of deception are mentioned, and their practical implications are discussed.