Behavioral Deception Detection: A Criminal Case Study

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Deception—a deliberate attempt to mislead others—is a common communication device (DePaulo et al., 1996). People admit to telling lies in 27% of face-to-face conversations, 37% of phone calls, and 14% of the emails they send (Hancock et al., 2004). These lies commonly serve to grease the wheels of social interaction—to fit into social groups, appease platonic and romantic relationships, and align with social norms. Indeed, the majority of lies told are prosocial in nature, with little to no immediate harm (Vrij, 2008). However, not all lies are so benign. “Big lies” are less common than “white lies,” but have more serious consequences (Serota & Levine, 2015). For example, a person who committed a heinous crime may use deception to evade justice by creating a false alibi, or—more dramatically—concealing the fact that they murdered their own child by falsely presenting themselves as a distressed parent desperately searching for their “missing” child. We will return to this dramatic form of deception in a case study to illustrate how behavioral cues may reveal emotional, highstakes lies. Although humans have evolved to use deception effectively, deception detection accuracy is quite poor (Bond & DePaulo, 2006). A meta-analysis suggests that, on average, people correctly discriminate liars from truth-tellers only 54% of the time. Specifically, people are better at identifying truths (61%) than lies (47%; Bond & DePaulo, 2006). To improve lie detection accuracy, researchers have set out to identify behavioral cues to deception (DePaulo et al., 2003). Here, we highlight evidence for behavioral cues to deception associated with prominent theories of deceptive behavior, consider critiques of these findings, and call for additional research of real, high-stakes lies.