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To date, the majority of investigations in to accuracy in detecting deception have used low stakes lies as stimulus materials, and findings from these studies suggest that people are generally poor at detecting deception. The research presented here utilised real life, high stakes lies as stimulus materials, to investigate the accuracy of police and non-police observers in detecting deception. It was hypothesised that both police and non-police observers would achieve above chance levels of accuracy in detecting deception, that police officers would be more accurate at detecting deception than non-police observers, that confidence in veracity judgements would be positively related to accuracy, and that consensus judgements would predict veracity. 107 observers (70 police officers and 37 non-police participants) watched 36 videos of people lying or telling the truth in an extremely high stakes, real life situation. Police observers achieved mean accuracy in detecting deception of 72%, non-police observers achieved 68% mean accuracy, and confidence in veracity judgements were positively related to accuracy. Consensus judgements correctly predicted veracity in 92% of cases.

CitationSubjective cues to deception/honesty in a high stakes situation: An exploratory approach.

Despite evidence that variation exists between individuals in high-stakes truth and deception detection accuracy rates, little work has investigated what differences in individuals' cognitive and emotional abilities contribute to this variation. Our study addressed this question by examining the role played by cognitive and affective theory of mind (ToM), emotional intelligence (EI), and various aspects of attention (alerting, orienting, executive control) in explaining variation in accuracy rates among 115 individuals [87 women; mean age = 27.04 years (SD = 11.32)] who responded to video clips of truth-tellers and liars in realworld, high-stakes contexts. Faster attentional alerting supported truth detection, and better cognitive ToM and perception of emotion (an aspect of EI) supported deception detection. This evidence indicates that truth and deception detection are distinct constructs supported by different abilities. Future research may address whether interventions targeting these cognitive and emotional traits can also contribute to improving detection skill.

Meta-analytic findings indicate that people, including police officers, are generally poor at detecting low-stakes deception. Related to this, investigations of behaviours that people reportedly use to make truth or lie judgements tend to conclude that people rely on incorrect stereotypes. However, consistent findings suggest that police officers are able to detect high-stakes deception; this implies that, at least in some contexts, police officers utilise reliable cues to deception. The research presented here was an investigation of cues to deception used by police officers (N = 69), when making veracity decisions about real world, high-stakes communications. Data were collected on both free report cues, and also prescribed cues that were known (from previous research), to discriminate between liars and truth-tellers in the communications that the police officers observed.Officers free reported using cues related to verbal content, emotion, body language, eyes, vocal cues, and external cues. Most prescribed cues were self-reportedly used correctly by large majorities of the officers, suggesting that they may not rely on inaccurate stereotypes.Self-report use of categories of free report cues, and prescribed cues, was not related to accuracy in detecting deception. As people may not always be aware of the behaviours on which their judgements are based, the relationships between some of the behaviours actually displayed in the communications, and group accuracy in detecting deception in those communications, were also investigated. Group accuracy was related to the presence of subjective, emotion-related cues in the communications.

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Toronto, Canada, 24–26 May.