Bella DePaulo

Who they are

DePaulo is a social psychologist who has spent much of her career on lying and on how it is judged. She also writes for a general readership on single life, which is unrelated to the work this site draws on. No institutional affiliation was retrieved for this page, so none is stated.

Her place in the research is as one half of a pair of questions. The first is whether liars behave differently from truth-tellers in ways an observer could see. The second is whether observers, given those behaviours, can tell the two apart. Her 2003 paper answers the first and her work with Bond answers the second. Together they explain a result that is otherwise puzzling: most people feel confident they can spot a liar, and the measurements say they usually cannot.

Key papers

DePaulo, B. M., Lindsay, J. J., Malone, B. E., Muhlenbruck, L., Charlton, K., & Cooper, H. (2003). "Cues to deception." Psychological Bulletin, 129(1), 74-118. The paper combined 1,338 estimates of 158 possible cues. Many behaviours had little or no measurable connection to lying. Liars were less forthcoming and told less convincing stories. Their accounts held fewer ordinary imperfections and fewer unusual details, and they made a more negative impression and appeared more tense. Cues were stronger when liars were motivated to succeed, particularly when the motive concerned identity rather than money, and when the lie concerned a transgression.

Bond, C. F., Jr., & DePaulo, B. M. (2006). "Accuracy of deception judgments." Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(3), 214-234. The synthesis of 206 documents and 24,483 judges found 54 per cent accuracy, with 47 per cent of lies and 61 per cent of truths judged correctly. It also reported that people tend to see those they talk to as honest, that lies are easier to detect when audible than when visible, and that people motivated to be believed look deceptive whether or not they are lying. The authors propose a double standard in evaluating lies, in which people construe others' lies more critically than their own.

Bond, C. F., Jr., & DePaulo, B. M. (2008). "Individual differences in judging deception: Accuracy and bias." Psychological Bulletin, 134(4), 477-492. The analysis covered 247 samples of people judging strangers in real time and found the differences in judges' ability to be minute.

Key ideas

Many of the cues people trust are not linked to lying. Hartwig and Bond, summarising the field in 2011, wrote that gaze aversion is not a valid indicator of lying and that many signs of nervousness, such as fidgeting, blushing or speech disturbances, are not systematically linked to it.

The cues that do differ are mostly in the story. Liars are less forthcoming and less convincing, and they give fewer ordinary imperfections and unusual details.

Observers lean towards belief. The 2006 synthesis found they were more inclined to judge deceptive messages as truthful than truthful messages as deceptive, which is why truths are recognised more often than lies are caught.

Skill barely varies. The 2008 analysis found small individual differences, and the best individual rate was no higher than guessing would produce across that many judges.

Stakes distort the picture. Motivation strengthens cues in liars, and it also makes honest speakers who want to be believed look deceptive.

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