Forensic Psychology Exam 1 Practice

The central idea is that people aren’t reliably good at telling truth from deception. Bond and DePaulo (2006) analyzed a large body of deception-detection studies and found that overall accuracy hovers around 54%—only a little above chance (50%). In other words, even when trying to judge whether someone is lying, people are only marginally better than guessing and often misclassify both lies and truths at similar rates. This futility isn’t fixed by more training or by using specific cues, because there aren’t consistent, dependable indicators of deception across contexts. So the best answer—54%—reflects that deception-detection is only modestly above chance, not a strong, reliable skill.