Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Much research attention has been devoted to identifying the factors that affect people's ability to detect others’ deceptive acts. Communication researchers typically have focused on the accuracy of judgments based on the verbal and nonverbal behaviors of a message source, unaided by technological devices or extra-interaction information. In general, results show that people are not very good at detecting deception, that people overestimate their ability to detect deception, and that people are more likely to believe that others are honest than deceptive, independent of the other person's actual honesty. Deception occurs when one person intentionally misleads another person. The most frequently investigated type of deception is the lie . Lying involves knowingly presenting false information. Other forms of deception include omission , evasion , and equivocation , but most deception detection research focuses exclusively on the ability to distinguish outright lies from complete truths ( McCornack 1997 ; →  Deceptive Message Production ). People are considered to be accurate when they judge truthful messages to be honest and deceptive messages to be dishonest. Deception detection experiments usually involve showing research participants a series of truths and lies, and having them identify which are which. Judges are typically exposed to an equal number of truths and lies, and ... log in or subscribe to read full text