Timothy R. Levine

Distinguished Professor & Chair of Communication Studies, University of Alabama at Birmingham

My expertise involves the topics of lying and deception, truth-default theory, interpersonal communication skills, credibility assessment & enhancement, interrogation, persuasion/influence, and social scientific research methods. 

Student, media, speaking, consulting, and expert witness inquiries are welcome.

What’s New with Tim (Aug. 2023)

New pages were added on cues and prolific liars.

Reader’s of Malcolm Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers continue to find me. Truth-default theory and my work on demeanor helped inspire Gladwell’s book. If you are interested, a good starting point is Gladwell’s podcast: Revisionist History, Season 4, “The Queen of Cuba” episode where I appear at about minute 31.    

https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/the-queen-of-cuba

Some sample other podcast appearances and YouTube videos are:

·       With Malika Dudley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhNn6wFRCBc or

            https://soundcloud.com/user-602105250/6-lying-and-deception-have-you   

 ·       Saltcube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAgE_O8q_w4

 ·       People who read people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oua9kAUl1YU

 ·       https://candourpodcast.com/dr-timothy-levine/

 ·       https://www.mishcon.com/news/podcasts/dishonesty-uncovered-episode-1-truth-default-theory

U.S Representative George Santos has brought substantial media attention to Kim Serota and my work on prolific liars. Our work investigating how often people lie continues. Recently, we have tracked people’s reports of lying over time and we continued to test the few prolific liars curve in additional countries, cultures, and languages.

The Serota et al. (2022) lying over time study has sparked much interest and generated an altmetric score over 400.

Serota, K. B., Levine, T. R., & Docan-Morgan, T. (2022). Unpacking variation in lie prevalence: Prolific liars, bad lie days, or both? Communication Monographs, 89, 307-331. https://doi.org/10.1080/03637751.2021.1985153

The Lee et al. (2021) paper tested the projected motive module from truth-default theory in art forgery scandals in Korea.

Lee, S. A., Park, H. S., & Levine, T. R. (2021). Judgments of honest and deceptive communication in art forgery controversies: Two field studies testing truth-default theory’s projected motive model in Korea. Asian Journal of Communication, 31, 536-549. https://doi.org/10.1080/01292986.2021.1977354

 I have updated Truth-default Theory:

A brief op-ed: https://iai.tv/articles/when-to-believe-lies-auid-2434

For more academic audiences:

Of course, my book Duped remains the go-to source for truth-default theory.

Here are a few additional relatively new works that might be of interest:

 

   

Updated August 12, 2023

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