Reading Between the Lies

Abstract

The best way to understand what someone is thinking is usually to listen to what she is saying, but what if she is being dishonest? We examined how perceivers’ expectations of dishonesty moderated the relationships among deception, deception detection, and empathic accuracy. Ninety-five dyads engaged in an interaction in which targets were instructed to lie about or exaggerate their skills. In half of the dyads, perceivers were told to anticipate deception. After the interaction, perceivers inferred how honest targets had been and what targets were thinking at multiple time points throughout the conversation. Perceivers tended to be more empathically accurate for thoughts that were reported when the target was being honest. They also tended to be empathically accurate when they also accurately detected deception. Moreover, naive perceivers were more empathically accurate than informed perceivers, and naive perceivers who inferred the content of honest thoughts achieved the highest levels of empathic accuracy.