Detection of Deception by Detection “Wizards”

Wizards of deception detection are rare individuals who achieve scores of 80% or higher on at least two of three videotaped lie detection tests. Most people's accuracy on these tests is about 50%, as would be expected by chance alone. Of more than 15,000 people tested, only 47 have been so classified. Although these individuals are termed “wizards,” their accuracy is not due to magic but to a particular kind of social-emotional cognition coupled with a strong motivation to discern the truthfulness of others.

Although the exact distribution of the ability to detect deception is not known, increasing evidence suggests that it is distributed mesokurtically (normally), like many psychological and physical variables. Among a hundred randomly selected people, most will be average in height. Only a very few will be exceptionally short or exceptionally tall. So, too, with lie detection. Most people are average in lie detection ability, but a very few (i.e., truth wizards) will be highly accurate.

Much of the research on lie detection has focused on identifying behaviors that differentiate between honest and deceptive behaviors. Implied but not stated in such research is the belief (or hope) that such behaviors can be used to detect automatically whether someone is lying or not. Certainly, there is evidence that some behaviors are more or less likely to occur in deception than in honesty. To date, however, no single behavior has been identified that always or usually occurs when someone is lying. Although some people have “tells”—behaviors they exhibit when they are lying, such tells vary from person to person, and not everyone has them. Another complication is that verbal and nonverbal behaviors related to deception do not occur in isolation. They are part of an expressive system that communicates a variety of information, such as emotions, thoughts, feelings, habits, social class, health, age, and many other aspects of individuality. The behaviors of liars and truth tellers must be evaluated in terms of their appropriateness for the individual, the situation, the statement being made, the relationship with the person discussing the veracity of the information, the stakes in the situation, and the rewards or punishments involved. Consistency among behaviors and the authenticity of any given behavior must also be evaluated. Thus, the task of detecting deception shares many characteristics with other judgments under uncertainty, including those involved in social cognition and social-emotional intelligence.

Most truth wizards are exceptionally sensitive to verbal and nonverbal clues to emotion and cognition. They notice facial expressions, including micro expressions, which most people do not. They are sensitive to nuances of language. They are aware of vocal clues—pitch, resonance, and respiration. They do not use just one of these cue domains but several of them. Average lie detectors attend to a more limited array of behaviors. Expert lie detectors are also more sensitive to baselines—whether the baseline is the person's usual behavior or the person's personality, social [Page 207]class, gender, or ethnicity. Wizards use these baselines to evaluate the behavioral clues they have perceived. On the other hand, no wizard uses all the available deception clues, and no single wizard is 100% accurate. Wizard accuracy, like that of most people, is affected by emotional disruption (e.g., someone looks like an ex-girlfriend) or lack of familiarity with a particular kind of lie.

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