LAY PERSONS AND POLICE OFFICERS BELIEFS REGARDING DECEPTIVE BEHAVIOR

Research on the detection of deception, via non-verbal cues, has shown that people's ability to successfully discriminate between truth and deception is only slightly better than chance level. One of the reason s for these disappointing findings possibly lies in people's inappropr iate beliefs regarding 'lying behaviour'. A 64-item questionnaire orig inally used in Germany, which targets participants' beliefs regarding truthful and deceptive behaviour, was used. The present study differed from previous research in three ways: (i) instead of a student popula tion, police officers and lay people were sampled, (ii) both people's beliefs regarding others' deceptive behaviour and their beliefs regard ing their own deceptive behaviour were examined, and (iii) both non-ve rbal cues to, and content characteristics of, deceptive statements wer e examined. Results were consistent with previous studies, which found significant differences between people's beliefs regarding deceptive behaviour and experimental observations of actual deceptive behaviour. Further, police officers held as many false beliefs as did lay people and finally, participants were more accurate in their beliefs regardi ng their own deceptive behaviour than they were in their beliefs regar ding others' behaviour.