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How good are you at determining when someone is lying? What signs do you look for? Lying is quite prevalent: Most of us lie at least once or twice per day (DePaulo, Kashy, Kirkendol, Wyer, & Epstein, 1996). One diary study suggests that college students lie in one out of every three social interactions, whereas nonstudents do so in about one in five of their interactions (DePaulo et al., 1996). We also tend to engage in more deception with those with whom we are less familiar than those we are closer to (DePaulo & Kashy, 1998). You may be surprised to learn that our ability to detect lies from facial expressions and other nonverbal behavior is surprisingly weak, despite what we see in popular television dramas (Ambady & Weisbuch, 2010; Bond & DePaulo, 2006). A recent meta-analysis of over 200 studies, most of which involved detecting lies from audiovisual materials, found that people successfully distinguish truth from lies at barely above chance rates, around 54% (See Table 5.3) (Bond & DePaulo, 2006). This detection rate drops to 51% if observers are given only visual information (i.e., the sound is muted) (Bond & DePaulo, 2006).

Robert DeNiro administers a lie detector to Ben Stiller in Meet the Parents.

© AF archive / Alamy Stock Photo.

In a large meta-analysis that examined 142 studies, no evidence was found for any individual systematic differences in lie detection accuracy; in other words, personality, education, gender, and other characteristics were not significantly correlated with accuracy (Bond, Jr. & DePaulo, 2008).

Despite the frequency of lying, we are not particularly good at differentiating truths from lies when given only nonverbal cues. Why aren’t we better? One reason is that we tend to assume that people are telling the truth and therefore are not generally on the lookout for lies (Bond & DePaulo, 2006). A second reason is that people hold inaccurate beliefs about which nonverbal cues might reveal that a person is lying. Research shows that, in general, nonverbal cues to deceit are more difficult to detect than verbal ones (DePaulo et al., 2003). Despite common preconceptions, there is no evidence of differences in eye contact, eye shifting, or gaze aversion between liars and truth tellers (DePaulo et al., 2003). Although some research suggests that there may be some other behavioral differences between liars and truth tellers (Vrij, Edward, Roberts, & Bull, 2000), DePaulo et al. (2003) found no evidence of differences in posture shifts or movements of the foot, leg, or hand. Overall, while reliable cues to deception are generally weak, they may be more pronounced when the liar is very motivated to deceive and the lie involves a moral transgression (DePaulo et al., 2003). Be sure to remember this before inferring that a friend, partner, or politician is lying based solely on his facial or body movements! In contrast, research supports the notion that there are a few verbal cues to deception, such as that liars provide fewer details about events, lies tend to make less sense and contain more contradictory statements than truths, and lies often include fewer ordinary imperfections and unusual details (DePaulo et al., 2003).

So far we have focused primarily on conscious or C-system processing in lie detection—which, as we know, is not particularly adept. But what about the nonconscious, X-system? Can it do any better? Recent research suggests that it can. In one study, Reinhard, Greifeneder, and Scharmach (2013) exposed participants to video recordings of individuals who made both true and false statements. After viewing the clips, some participants were given three minutes of distraction-free time to reflect on the statements and distinguish truths from lies, whereas others did so only after spending those three minutes engaged in a mentally taxing activity. The purpose of the distracting task was to prevent participants from consciously analyzing the behavior of the individuals in the video recordings and focusing on inaccurate or unreliable deception cues, forcing them to rely only on nonconscious processing when distinguishing truth from falsity. In this and subsequent studies Reinhard et al. found that participants in the nonconscious processing conditions were significantly better at identifying true versus false statements than were those able to consciously examine the evidence (See Figure 5.3). At least in these studies, the automatic system performed better than the controlled one.

Table 5.3

Criminals are the only group who can detect lies significantly above chance levels.