Who is most accurate at detecting lies?

In a previous post I shared with you that to increase your ability to detect deceit you needed to be accurate in detecting honesty. Another way to increase your lie detection ability is to receive adequate feedback on your reads. So who gets the most feedback? One of the groups who gets the most feedback about their reads are prisoners. They must read their fellow inmates communications accurately in order to survive and thrive. Research comparing
prisoners, police detectives, patrol police officers, prison guards, customs officers, and college students showed that prisoners where the most accurate at detecting deceit. Previous studies, mainly conducted with college students as subjects, showed that people have some incorrect beliefs about behavioral clues to deception. In this research study it was hypothesized that prisoners would have the best notion about clues of deception, due to the fact that they receive the most adequate feedback about successful deception strategies. The results supported this hypothesis.

Detecting Deception is More Than Lies

Those of you that follow my blog know that I have been researching nonverbal cues of deception and training people on deception detection for many years. You may not know that my programs are actually teach people to distinguish truth tellers from someone who is lying. I also teach people how to build their personal credibility. Why do I train people to detect honesty in a deception detection course? Because the research deception detection indicates that you can train people to detect deception but unless you also train them to detect the truth they will end up with a deception bias . That bias acts in conjunction with other errors in detecting deception such as suspecting people of lying when they are merely nervous or reading normally introverted people as liars to increase the simply introverted that increase false deception detection judgments. Though some research shows the a deception bias increases ones ability to detect deception I believe that a balanced approach creates a higher degree of accuracy