The use-the-best heuristic facilitates deception detection

Bruno Verschuere*, Chu-Chien Lin, Sara Huismann, Bennett Kleinberg, Marleen Willemse, Emily Chong Jia Mei, Thierry van Goor, Leonie H S Löwy, Obed Kwame Appiah, Ewout Meijer

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

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Abstract

Decades of research have shown that people are poor at detecting deception. Understandably, people struggle with integrating the many putative cues to deception into an accurate veracity judgement. Heuristics simplify difficult decisions by ignoring most of the information and relying instead only on the most diagnostic cues. Here we conducted nine studies in which people evaluated honest and deceptive handwritten statements, video transcripts, videotaped interviews or live interviews. Participants performed at the chance level when they made intuitive judgements, free to use any possible cue. But when instructed to rely only on the best available cue (detailedness), they were consistently able to discriminate lies from truths. Our findings challenge the notion that people lack the potential to detect deception. The simplicity and accuracy of the use-the-best heuristic provides a promising new avenue for deception research.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)718-728
JournalNature human behaviour
Volume7
Early online date20 Mar 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - May 2023

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