ABSTRACT

Research has convincingly demonstrated that people are not good at detecting lies. In studies concerning the detection of deception, observers (mostly college students) are typically given videotapes or audiotapes and asked to judge whether each of a number of people is lying or telling the truth. The alternatives to choose from in these studies are “the person is lying” or “the person is not lying”, resulting in a 50% chance of a correct answer by just guessing. In a review of 39 recent detection of deception studies (all published after 1981), Vrij (2000) found that the percentages of lie detection (the “accuracy rate”) in most of these studies ranged from 45% to 60%, with only five studies exceeding the 60% accuracy level. The mean accuracy rate was 56.6%. It sounds plausible that several factors, such as the circumstances under which the lie takes place, and the personal characteristics of the lie detector will have an impact on the ability to detect lies. Such factors, that are widely disregarded in the detection of deception research so far, will be addressed in the present studies.