Can jurors usually tell whos telling the truth and whos lying?
The ability of average persons to detect deception in others has been extensively studied by researchers including Paul Ekman, Maureen O’Sullivan, Bella dePaulo, C.F.Bond, Aldert Vrij, and others. The results they have reported in the peer-reviewed literature are strong and consistent: they cannot. The average person is unable to tell even when a child is lying. A study by Charles Honts and his colleagues at Boise State, published a few years ago in Applied Developmental Psychology, found that people were no better than chance at detecting lies told by 7 year olds during an interview with a person whom the children believed to be a police officer.
