Why do lie-catchers fail? A lens model meta-analysis of human lie judgments
Maria Hartwig and Charles Bond used Brunswik's lens model in four meta-analyses to ask why people are poor at detecting lies. They found that people's perceptions of deception are generally linked to valid behavioural cues, so people seldom rely on the wrong ones. Accuracy is instead limited mainly by how weakly behaviour signals lying. Intuitive judgments of deception were more accurate than people's explicit beliefs about cues. The authors conclude that improving lie detection may depend more on increasing the real behavioural differences between liars and truth-tellers than on training observers in valid cues.
Maria Hartwig and Charles Bond used Brunswik's lens model in four meta-analyses to ask why people are poor at detecting lies. They found that people's perceptions of deception are generally linked to valid behavioural cues, so people seldom rely on the wrong ones. Accuracy is instead limited mainly by how weakly behaviour signals lying. Intuitive judgments of deception were more accurate than people's explicit beliefs about cues. The authors conclude that improving lie detection may depend more on increasing the real behavioural differences between liars and truth-tellers than on training observers in valid cues.
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-25 via the published article.
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Hartwig, M., & Bond, C. F., Jr. (2011). Why do lie-catchers fail? A lens model meta-analysis of human lie judgments. Psychological Bulletin, 137(4), 643-659. doi:10.1037/a0023589