ABSTRACT
Research consistently fi nds that people are only slightly better than chance at detecting deception. Meta-analysis of more than 200 experi-ments fi nds that people are, on average, 54% accurate when they have a 50-50 chance of being right (Bond & DePaulo, 2006). This level of accuracy is statistically better than could be obtained by chance alone, but it also suggests that people are not much better than a random coin fl ip at correctly distinguishing honest communication from outright lies.
