2.4. Interpersonal deception theory (IDT) strategies and tactics
IDT (Buller and Burgoon, 1996) was developed to explain and predict deception and its detection in interpersonal contexts. As part of that theory development, Buller and Burgoon (1994), Burgoon, Buller, Guerrero, Afifi, and Feldman (1996; see also Jacobs, Brashers, and Dawson 1996, and McCornack 1992) proposed a series of general strategies and specific tactics that deceivers may employ to manage the information in their messages and
to evade detection. Tests of IDT (e.g., Buller, Burgoon, Buslig, and Roiger 1994, 1996;
Burgoon et al. 1996), along with prior research and a recent meta-analysis (DePaulo, Lindsay, Malone, Muhlenbach, Charlton, and Cooper 2003), have served to clarify what strategies and specific verbal indicators may be valid.
They can be summarized as follows: ...
(d) relevance manipulations – deceivers may give responses that are semantically indirect (e.g., forms of polite speech) or irrelevant (such as irrelevant details). They may also be syntactically indirect (e.g., following a question with a question).