DETECTING DECEPTION 207truth is lacking we suffer, and society suffers. When Adolf Hitler lied to
Neville Chamberlain, there was not peace in our time, and over fifty
million people paid the price with their lives. When Richard Nixon lied
to the nation, it destroyed the respect many had for the office of the
president. When Enron executives lied to their employees, thousands of
lives were ruined overnight. We count on our government and commer-
cial institutions to be honest and truthful. We need and expect our
friends and family to be truthful. Truth is essential for all relations be
they personal, professional, or civic.
We are fortunate that, for the most part, people are honest and that
most of the lies we hear daily are actually social or “white” lies, meant to
protect us from the true answer to questions such as “Do I look fat in this
outfit?” Unquestionably, when it comes to more serious matters, it is in
our own self-interest to assess and determine the truth of what we are
told. Achieving this, however, is not easy. For thousands of years, people
have been using soothsayers and all manner of dubious techniques—
such as putting a hot knife on a person’s tongue—to detect deception.
Even today, some organizations use handwriting samples, voice-stress
analysis, or the polygraph to spot liars. All of these methods have ques-
tionable results. There is no method, no machine, no test, no person
that is 100 percent accurate at uncovering deception. Even the vaunted
polygraph is accurate only 60 to 80 percent of the time, depending on
the operator of the instrument (Ford, 1996, 230–232; Cumming,
2007).
Looking For LiarsThe truth is that identifying deceit is so difficult that repeated studies
begun in the 1980s show that most of us—including judges, attorneys,
clinicians, police officers, FBI agents, politicians, teachers, mothers, fa-
thers, and spouses—are no better than chance (fifty-fifty) when it comes
to detecting deception (Ford, 1996, 217, Ekman, 1991, 162). It is disturb-
ing but true. Most people, including professionals, do no better than a
coin toss at correctly perceiving dishonesty (Ekman & O’Sullivan, 1991,