Deception is defined, for the purposes of this article, as a successful or unsuccessful deliberate attempt to create in another a belief that the sender of the message considers to be untrue. Although it is hard to think of a context in which no deception transpires, the study of deception and how to detect it
Wizards of deception detection are rare individuals who achieve scores of 80% or higher on at least two of three videotaped lie detection tests. Most people’s accuracy on these tests is about 50%, as would be expected by chance alone. Of more than 15,000 people tested, only 47 have been so classified. Although these individuals
The credibility and reliability of children’s testimony are particularly important in instances where children are called on as primary witnesses in legal proceedings, such as sexual abuse or child custody cases. Although it is expected for children to provide truthful statements about given events, children may also give false reports in these situations for a
High-stakes lies occur where there are large positive consequences of getting away with the lie or large negative consequences of getting caught. Because the outcome of the lie is of considerable concern to the liar, it follows that he or she will probably experience more guilt and/or detection anxiety than when telling low-stakes lies. In
Cognitive load interview protocols are designed to make interviews more demanding for suspects. This increased demand has a greater effect on liars than on truth tellers because liars already find being interviewed more mentally taxing than do truth tellers. The result is that cognitive load interview protocols facilitate discrimination between liars and truth tellers. Lying
P300 is a brain wave derived from the electroencephalogram (EEG), which has recently been used as a novel information channel in the detection of deception. The traditional channels are recorded from the autonomic nervous system and include physiological activity such as respiration pattern, blood pressure, and skin conductance. In contrast, the EEG is a record
Traditional means of lie detection, such as the polygraph, rely on measurements of peripheral nervous system (PNS) activity. Recent advances in noninvasive brain imaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), have aroused public and academic interest in developing a viable alternative. This research paper briefly explains the technique of MRI and its application
Trying to find a tell-tale sign of deceit (a “Pinocchio’s nose”) in human nonverbal behavior has been the subject of much effort, and many suggestions have been put forward. In lay people’s thinking and in police interrogation manuals alike, one can find numerous ideas about detecting deceit from nonverbal behaviors such as eye contact or
People sometimes try to determine whether they have actually experienced an event they have in mind, or whether this memory is based on imagination. The processes by which a person attributes a memory to an actual experience (external source) or imagination (internal source) is called reality monitoring (RM). Although the RM concept is not related
The paradigmatic finding from research on deception detection is that people are poor at discriminating between liars and truth tellers. This research paper shows, however, that deception detection performance can be significantly improved if the investigator is allowed to interview the suspect, is given background information about the case and the suspect, and knows how