Human Behavior and Deception Detection

Human intelligence is the key to stopping terrorism, and therefore it is essential to know when the information obtained is false. This article briefly outlines the research on behavioral clues to deception, as well as research on people's abilities to spot deception once it has happened. We find that there is no clue or clue pattern that is specific to deception, although there are clues specific to emotion and cognition. In general, behavioral clues are only limited in their abilities to identify deception and that there are still behavioral measurement issues that may plague research on deception. Moreover, a closer examination of the laboratory research suggests that many research studies are not relevant to security contexts, thus the research literature may underestimate the usefulness of behavioral information—particularly for the utility of identifying emotional and cognitive states. We also find that most people, unaided by technology, cannot detect lies from behavioral information, but that some groups do show significantly higher levels of accuracy—although more research is needed to understand why. We conclude that a more directed interaction with scientists and practitioners—in both lab work and in the real world, in creating real-world databases, identifying base rates for malfeasant behavior in security settings, optimizing training, and identifying preexisting excellence within security organizations can more rapidly capitalize on the usefulness of behavioral information in security settings. Keywords: behavior; cognition; deception; detection; emotion; judgment; lying; malfeasance; memory