People sometimes lie by omitting information. The information lie tellers then report could be entirely truthful. We examined whether the truthful information that lie tellers report in omission lies contains verbal cues indicating that the person is lying. We made a distinction between (i) essential information (events surrounding the omission)…

We examined the efficacy of a Model Statement to detect opinion lies. A total of 93 participants discussed their opinion about the recent strikes on two occasions, 1 week apart. In one interview they told the truth and in the other interview they lied. Each interview consisted of two phases. In Phase 1 they discussed their alleged opinion (truth…

The current study examined verbal cues of veracity and deception in 911 calls reporting homicides or suicides of another person. Specifically, the current study compared differences in the presence/absence and number of potential verbal indicators between a sample of deceptive callers who concealed their role in causing the person's death and…

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[subscript 10] = 93.28), and a higher proportion…

Conspiracy theories express mistrust in common explanations and epistemic authorities. Independent of concrete content, the extent of endorsing conspiracy theories has also shown associations with interpersonal mistrust. Arguing from an evolutionary and error-management perspective, this increased interpersonal mistrust could either represent an…

Interviewees sometimes deliberately omit reporting some information. Such omission lies differ from other lies because all the information interviewees present may be entirely truthful. Truth tellers and lie tellers carried out a mission. Truth tellers reported the entire mission truthfully. Lie tellers were also entirely truthful but left out one…

Research has consistently shown people predominantly rely on undiagnostic nonverbal cues when detecting deceit, whereas verbal cues are more accurate. In three experiments, we investigated whether the simple instruction not to focus on nonverbal cues would make people focus more on diagnostic verbal cues and hence more accurate in detecting lies.…

Nahari, Vrij, and Fischer [(2014b), "Applied Cognitive Psychology," 28, 122-128] found that, when participants were forewarned that their statements would be checked for verifiable details, truth tellers gave much more verifiable details than liars. In this direct replication (n = 72), participants wrote a statement claiming they had…

Content-based techniques for credibility assessment (Criteria-Based Content Analysis [CBCA], Reality Monitoring [RM]) have been shown to distinguish between experience-based and fabricated statements in previous meta-analyses. New simulations raised the question whether these results are reliable revealing that using meta-analytic methods on…

Nonprobative but related photos can increase the perceived truth value of statements relative to when no photo is presented ("truthiness"). In two experiments, we tested whether truthiness generalizes to credibility judgments in a forensic context. Participants read short vignettes in which a witness viewed an offence. The vignettes were…

The Self-Administered Interview (SAI©) is designed to elicit detailed witness reports in the aftermath of incidents. In two sets of meta-analyses, we compared the number of correct details reported, the number of incorrect details reported, and the accuracy of reports provided by witnesses in initial reports (SAI© vs. other reporting formats) and…

The present experiment investigated to what extent providing participants with a model statement influences the ability of the verifiability approach to detect deception. Participants gave a true and false statement about a negative autobiographical event, with half of the participants receiving a detailed model statement just before giving their…

Wrongful conviction statistics suggest that jurors pay little heed to the quality of confession evidence when making verdict decisions. However, recent research indicates that confession inconsistencies may sometimes reduce perception of suspect guilt. Drawing on theoretical frameworks of attribution theory, correspondence bias, and the story…

Pseudo-profound bullshit pertains to grammatically and syntactically correct but meaningless sentences, that, due to syntactical correctness appear as made to communicate something and research shows that people deem them profound. However, the effect of differing source credibility on bullshit profoundness evaluations has, to our knowledge, not…

Despite the high incidence of sexual assault, doubt about allegations is common. Previous research suggests that victims expressing positive or no emotion are perceived as less credible than those expressing negative emotions. However, little is known about which specific negative emotional expressions contribute to credibility in this context. In…