Examining the Role of Intuition in Deception Detection

Many people assume that logical thinking can help to detect deception; however, previous studies show that relying on intuition may be a better practice (Albrechtsen, Meissner, & Susa, 2009). The current research consists of two studies which examine the role of intuition in deception detection. The purpose of Study 1 was to find if participants are able to implicitly and explicitly distinguish between truths and lies. Student participants in this study watched 16 video clips featuring a person telling a true story or a lie. Our results show that participants were implicitly rating the truth-tellers significantly more likeable and more trustworthy than the liars (all ps\u3c.05); but they were not able to accurately distinguish the lies from true videos. This suggests that their intuition helped them detect the lies, but did not improve their explicit judgments of deception. Study 2 presents participants with shorter video clips to see if this improves their intuitive ratings and accuracy. The current data for Study 2 shows that participants are still at chance levels for explicitly detecting deception. However, and contrary to previous research, these findings also reveal that participants no longer intuitively distinguish between true stories and lies. Participants may not have had enough time to make an intuitive judgment, which in turn led to difficulty in detecting lies. Our findings from both studies expand on previous research and may be beneficial to many professions including crime investigators and social workers as well as in jury deliberations and everyday social situations