Lie Detection in Employment

Companies build their structure with employees that are good at performing their jobs and completing work tasks. Applicant interviews are a crucial factor to hire the right person for the job. However, how do we know whether the applicant is telling the truth or lying in the interview? Research suggests that hiring managers generally trust the information they receive in interviews, and in fact, sometimes become overconfident about the accuracy of their hiring decisions when interviews are incorporated into the selection battery (Furnham, 2008; Kausel, Culbertson & Madrid, 2016). However, Weiss and Feldman (2006) found that 81% of the participants admitted to lying in the written application and/or the interview. The current study assesses whether participants are able to accurately detect lies in a job interview context. Participants were asked to watch a series of simulated job interviews that present true and lie answers and determine whether they believed the individual was lying or telling the truth. The subjects were also asked to rate how much they liked, trusted, and were willing to hire the person on each video clip along with answering a few personality questionnaires at the end of the experiment. Overall, we expect that participants will not be able to accurately detect deception. The findings of this study will be relevant for hiring managers who need to be able to select the right candidate for a job, who need to be aware that applicants may not always be honest and truthful