Stop in the name of lies: The cost of blocking the truth to deceive

Most researchers assume that deception involves a conflict between a predominant truth response and a deliberate deceptive response. Such a view is consistent with dual process theories that state that high-order cognition operates through fast-automatic processes that may conflict with slow-deliberate ones. In the present study, we tested whether one must inhibit the truth to deceive in light of inconsistent findings in the literature. One hundred and eighty-nine participants were tested across two Negative Priming paradigms that rest on the logic that the activation of a fast-automatic process will be hampered on a given display if it is inhibited on the previous display. Our findings suggest that truthful responses are predominant in healthy adults, which is why inhibitory control is required to activate a deliberate deceptive mode. We argue that the findings from deception studies could be best accounted for by dual process theories.