Increasing Deception Detection Accuracy with Strategic Questioning

Abstract

One explanation for the finding of slightly above-chance accuracy in detecting deception experiments is limited variance in sender transparency. The current study sought to increase accuracy by increasing variance in sender transparency with strategic interrogative questioning. Participants (total N = 128) observed cheaters and noncheaters who were questionedwith eitherindirectbackground questions or strategicquestioning. Accuracywas significantly below chance (44%) in the background questions condition and substantially above chance (68%) in the strategic interrogative questioning condition. The results suggest that transparency can be increased by strategic question asking and that accuracy rates well above chance are possible even for untrained judges exposed to only brief communications. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2958.2010.01374.x It is both commonly accepted and well documented that people are only slightly better than chance at distinguishing truths from lies in deception detection experiments. Bond and DePaulo’s (2006) meta-analysis found that average accuracy in deception detection experiments is only 54%, where 50% could be obtained by chance. This finding is remarkably stable, with 90% of published studies reporting