Question

Research indicates that there is little, if any, relationship between our confidence in our abilities to detect lies and our actual ability to do so. You may want to consider detecting lies within the “GreatFourfold Table of Life.” (text pages 60-61).

It is possible that our overestimates result from a selective focus on those lies we have detected; these may be cognitively available to us and inflate our estimates of our own accuracy.

In contrast, we may focus less on our “hit rate” with detecting the many truths we encounter daily.

In fact, Ekman, O’Sullivan and Frank (1999) found that whereas federal officers correctly identified 80% of lies, they only detected 66% of truths. A synopsis of the study may be found at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/05/990528003127.htm

Have you been fooled by someone's deception before? Have you gone over each event to try and spot the deception in retrospect? Do you think your "hit rate" improved from these experiences?  

Answer 1

I have been fooled and quite often continue to be fooled by people's deception. The idea that we possess a tendency to selectively remember instances wherein we have successfully detected lies in order to affirm our perceived sense of accuracy rings true in my case. Because I am a student of psychology, I tend to overestimate my ability to judge people's truest intentions. This has often lead me to cases where I have ignored obvious facts and gone ahead with my biased perception. Although I am now more skeptical of my ability to detect lies, I still find myself making wrong assumptions. My "hit" rate definitely needs a lot of improvement.