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Several previous studies have compared people receiving training in nonverbal behaviors associated with deception to control groups receiving no training (e.g., deTurck, Feeley, & Roman, 1997; deTurck, Harszlak, Bodhorn, & Texter, 1990; deTurck & Miller, 1990; Fieldler & Walka, 1993; Vrij, 1994; Vrij & Graham, 1997). This research implicitly or explicitly presumes the following: (a) a set of specific nonverbal behaviors exist that is diagnostically useful in distinguishing truthful messages from lies; (b) one of the reasons that research-naive people cannot accurately detect deception is because they do not rely on authentic deception cues and/or that they mistakenly rely on cues that have little diagnostic utility; and (c) peoples' judgmental accuracy would increase if the are trained to make veracity judgments based on authentic behaviors. Consistent with this reasoning, training studies have indeed found that people who are trained are slightly to moderately more accurate than people who have not been trained (e.g., deTurck et al., 1990; deTurck & Miller, 1990; Fieldler & Walka, 1993; Vrij & Graham, 1997), and a recent meta-analysis of these nonverbal training studies found that (although effects vary substantially from study to study) training, on average, increases detection accuracy by 4% (Frank & Feeley, 2003).
The most recent meta-analysis of the relationship between source veracity and specific nonverbal behaviors, however, suggests these relationships are weak, inconsistent, and limited to high motivation lies (DePaulo et al., 2003). If specific nonverbal behaviors are weak and unreliable indicators of deception, then one might question why nonverbal training improves accuracy. This paper argues that the simple act of training, independent of the training content, might improve accuracy simply because those in training conditions process messages more critically. This speculation is tested in three experiments that included both no training and bogus training control groups.
Deception Detection Accuracy
Deception scholars agree that people's ability to distinguish truths from lies tends to be significantly, but only slightly, better than chance levels. Across studies, meta-analysis indicates that the mean accuracy rate is about 57% (Kraut, 1980), and literature reviews conclude that the accuracy rates reported in individual studies almost always fall within the range of 45-70% accuracy (e.g., Feeley & Young, 1998; Kalbfleisch, 1994; Miller & Stiff, 1993; Vrij, 2000). In short, the belief that deception detection accuracy rates are only slightly better than 50/50 is among the most well-documented and most commonly held conclusions in deception research.
Several reasonable explanations exist for peoples' relatively poor performance in deception detection. For example, systematic errors and biases in judgments such as the truth-bias are well documented (Levine, Park, & McCornack, 1999). Importantly for the current investigation, however, research-naive people focus on the wrong behaviors when trying to distinguish truths from lies (Miller & Stiff, 1993; Stiff & Miller, 1986). Although no 'sure-fire' deception cues exist, some statistically reliable correlates of deception have been reported in the literature (e.g., DePaulo et al., 2003; Kraut, 1980; Zuckerman, DePaulo, & Rosenthal, 1981), as have several behaviors that research-naive receivers tend rely upon when making deception judgments (e.g., Stiff & Miller, 1986; Zuckerman, Koestner, & Driver, 1981). When comparing the 'authentic' deception cues to the behaviors that people tend to use, it becomes obvious that people are often influenced by some behaviors that lack predictive utility and people often ignore other diagnostically useful behaviors (Fiddler & Walka, 1993; Miller & Stiff, 1993; Stiff & Miller, 1986).
If there are reliable and diagnostically useful nonverbal behaviors associated with deception, and if one of the important reasons why people are inaccurate at detecting lies is because they focus on the wrong behaviors, then training people to look for authentic deception behaviors should lead to a substantial improvement in deception detection accuracy. Research on nonverbal training is consistent with this reasoning. Those receiving nonverbal training in nonverbal behaviors believed to have diagnostic utility have been found to be significantly more accurate than people in no training, control groups (e.g., deTurck et al., 1990; deTurck & Miller, 1990; Fieldler & Walka, 1993; Frank & Feeley, 2003; Vrij, 1994). Nevertheless, the across-study average effect size is modest (r = .20), findings vary significantly and substantially from study to study, and important methodological limitations are commonplace (Frank & Feeley, 2003).
Nonverbal Deception Cues
It is commonly believed that truth-tellers and liars exhibit different patterns of nonverbal behaviors. For example, in an often cited meta-analysis, Zuckerman, DePaulo, & Rosenthal, (1981) found that relative to truth-tellers, liars used more adaptors, made more speech errors, paused more often, and had higher pitch. As another example, deTurck and Miller (1985) reported that liars used more adaptors, more hand gestures, more speech errors, more pauses, longer response latencies, and shorter talk duration than truth-tellers. Drawing upon these findings and others, literature reviews often conclude that specific nonverbal behaviors are diagnostically useful indicators of deception (e.g., Burgoon, Buller, & Woodall, 1989; Miller & Stiff, 1993).
These conclusions, however, have been recently challenged (e.g., DePaulo et al., 2003; Frank & Feeley, 2003; McCornack, 1997). Some scholars argue that little reason exists to expect behavioral differences between everyday, low consequence truths and lies (DePaulo, Kashy, Kirkendol, & Epstein, 1996; McCornack, 1997) and that marked behavioral differences may be limited to high stakes lies (Frank & Feeley, 2003). Consistent with this reasoning, the most recent and most thorough meta-analysis of deception-related behaviors indicates that the effects of source veracity on specific source behaviors are often small and unreliable (DePaulo et al., 2003). For example, of the deception cues listed above, only talk duration and pitch were significantly related to source honesty across studies, and the effects for these two behavior types were small (r < .20; DePaulo et al., 2003). [1] Motivation to deceive, however, was found to be an important moderator. Larger behavioral differences between truth-tellers and liars are observed as the stakes increase.
Current Research Focus
Recent findings concerning the lack of substantial nonverbal differences present an interesting paradox for nonverbal training studies. If the nonverbal behaviors that previous researchers have used to train judges really have little diagnostic utility, then why...
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