Abstract

This study was conducted to demonstrate linguistic and psychological characteristics in deceptive statements written in Korean by comparing true statement with deceptive one that was written to minimize one's own responsibility for assault experience. For this aim, 112 university students participated in the study. First, the students wrote down true statement about one's own assault experience, and a week later, they wrote down deceptive statement. When they wrote down deceptive statement, they imagined a situation where their assault experience was made public and they wanted to avoid liability or blame from their acquaintances. Sixty three paired statements were analyzed with K-LIWC program. Then, the results demonstrated linguistic and psychological characteristics when people lie to minimize responsibility for their own assault experience. In addition, summative content analysis was conducted in order to figure out linguistic and psychological characteristics in deceptive statements. The findings of this study suggest that most linguistic variables and psychological variables are increased in prologue and conclusion of the deceptive statements by adding sentences to avoid one's responsibilities. In conclusion, importance and limitations of the study and directions for future research were discussed.