"Intuitive" Lie Detection of Children's Deception by Law Enforcement Officials and University Students

Overview

Journal Law Hum Behav

Publisher American Psychological Association

Specialties Forensic Sciences
Psychology
Social Sciences

Date 2005 Mar 1

PMID 15732652

Citations 15

Authors

Amy-May Leach

Victoria Talwar

Kang Lee

Nicholas Bala

R C L Lindsay

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Adults' ability to detect children's deception was examined. Police officers, customs officers, and university students attempted to differentiate between children who lied or told the truth about a transgression. When children were simply questioned about the event (Experiment 1), the adult groups could not distinguish between lie-tellers and truth-tellers. However, participants were more accurate when the children had participated in moral reasoning tasks (Experiment 2) or promised to tell the truth (Experiment 3) before being interviewed. Additional exposure to the children did not affect accuracy (Experiment 4). Customs officers were more certain about their judgments than other groups, but no more accurate. Overall, adults have a limited ability to identify children's deception, regardless of their experience with lie detection.

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