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What about deep, non-superficial thinkers?
Answer Quickly to Be Believed – Pausing Before Replying Decreases Perceived Sincerity:
When people pause before replying to a question, even for just a few seconds, their answers are perceived to be less sincere and credible than if they had replied immediately, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.
And the longer the hesitation, the less sincere the response appears.
"Evaluating other people's sincerity is a ubiquitous and important part of social interactions," said lead author Ignazio Ziano, PhD, of Grenoble Ecole de Management. "Our research shows that response speed is an important cue on which people base their sincerity inferences."
The research was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Researchers conducted a series of experiments involving more than 7,500 individuals from the United States, the United Kingdom and France. Participants either listened to an audio snippet, viewed a video or read an account of a person responding to a simple question (e.g., did they like a cake a friend made or had they stolen money from work). In each scenario, the response time varied from immediate to a 10-second delay. Participants then rated the sincerity of the response on a sliding scale.
Across all 14 experiments, participants consistently rated delayed responses as less sincere regardless of the question, whether it was a harmless one about cake or a more serious one about committing a crime.
[...] The findings have wide implications, according to Ziano. "Whenever people are interacting, they are judging each other's sincerity. These results can be applied to a wide range of interactions, going from workplace chit-chat to couples and friends bickering," he said. "Further, in job interviews and in court hearings and trials, people are often tasked with judgments of sincerity. Here, too, response speed could play a part."
[...] The final experiment found that explicitly instructing participants to ignore delayed response reduced, but did not completely remove, the effect of delayed response on judgment of sincerity or guilt.
"Nevertheless, our research shows that, on the whole, a fast response seems to be perceived as more sincere, while a response that is delayed for even a couple of seconds may be considered a slow lie," said Ziano.
Journal Reference:
Ignazio Ziano, Deming WangSlow lies: Response delays promote perceptions of insincerity - PubMed, Journal of personality and social psychology (DOI: DOI: 10.1037/pspa0000250)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Friday February 26 2021, @09:37PM (1 child)
Answer time depends on a lot of elements, and while the answer to the question "what did you have for breakfast this morning" requires very little mental resources, answers to other questions may take significant processing.
I'm not surprised however that people would fall for a fast wrong answer and look askance at a methodical accurate answer. I suspect a large part false convictions comes from people assuming "If X happens (or is asked), a person will definitely positively invariable react in Y manner" when the truth about human response is never so shallow. Personally, I find that I close my eyes when discussing things (*). I've had to work very hard at overcoming that tendency because I know people think it's a sign of untruthfulness even though the reality is that it is a sign I'm taking the question seriously and doing my best to answer correctly. The irony is that I waste a certain number of brain cycles simply self-monitoring which impairs the answering part.
(*) If I tray to backport a reason, I'd guess that the reduction in visual clutter makes thinking easier, but the eye closing thing was something I never thought about until it was pointed out to me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 10 2021, @07:13AM
re: closing your eyes, this isn't common in folks along the Autism spectrum. There are other hypersensitivities that are also common (headlights, sharp noises, etc). Anyways, you're not at all alone in that behaviour. Did you have any developmental delays, especially in socialization? This (closing eyes when talking) also shows up noticeably in kids who had socialization challenges in the grade school years.
It also shows up commonly in victims of abuse when discussing trauma-adjacent topics, but that's clearly not what you're referring to.
Anyways, don't worry about it, or if it bugs you, make a habit of snapping your eyes open when you notice it. You're evidently high-functioning and can self train without any fancy CBT tricks beyond closing the notice/react feedback loop.