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Discriminating deceptive from truthful statements using the verifiability approach: A meta‐analysis
Author(s) -
Verschuere Bruno,
Bogaard Glynis,
Meijer Ewout
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/acp.3775
Subject(s) - verifiable secret sharing , suspect , statement (logic) , psychology , social psychology , deception , moderation , computer security , computer science , law , political science , criminology , set (abstract data type) , programming language
The Verifiability Approach predicts that truth tellers will include details that can be verified by the interviewer, whereas liars will refrain from providing such details. A meta‐analysis revealed that truth tellers indeed provided more verifiable details ( k = 28, d = 0.49, 95% CI [0.25; 0.74], BF 10 = 93.28), and a higher proportion of verifiable details ( k = 26, d = 0.49 95% CI: 0.25, 0.74, p < .001, BF 10 = 81.49) than liars. We found no evidence that liars would include more unverifiable details than truth tellers ( k = 20, d = −0.31, 95% CI [−0.02; 0.64], BF 10 = 1.12) Moderator analysis revealed the verifiable detail effect was substantially larger when the statement is the suspect's alibi, but smaller when an incentive to appear credible was used. Our findings support the main prediction behind the Verifiability Approach, but also stress the need for larger sample sizes and independent replications.