by David Kim

From the earliest forms of human communication, deception has been an inescapable part of social interaction. People lie—frequently and for countless reasons. Studies indicate that the average person tells at least two lies per day, and in a typical 10-minute conversation, 60% of individuals will deceive their conversation partner at least once. While some lie infrequently, others do so habitually, driven by motives as diverse as the lies themselves.

Most lies are trivial—harmless “white lies” told to maintain social harmony, spare feelings, or avoid minor conflicts. These low-stakes deceptions, often concerning personal opinions or emotions, rarely cause lasting damage. However, lies become far more consequential when they serve darker purposes. High-stakes deception involves serious falsehoods meant to conceal wrongdoing—cheating, infidelity, or even criminal acts. The most insidious lies are those told for self-preservation, masking illegal behavior that can harm others.

A critical question arises: Can lies be reliably detected in real time? The answer is far more complicated than popular culture suggests. Many believe they can spot a liar through body language—shifty eyes, nervous fidgeting, or speech hesitations—but decades of research prove otherwise. Humans are remarkably poor at distinguishing truth from deception based solely on nonverbal cues. Even trained professionals, such as law enforcement officers, perform only marginally better than chance. Studies show that accuracy rates rarely exceed 54%, meaning a coin flip would be nearly as effective.

This overconfidence in detecting deception has dire consequences, particularly in the criminal justice system. Police, prosecutors, and jurors often operate under the false assumption that behavioral cues reliably indicate guilt. Innocent individuals under stress—facing interrogation or wrongful suspicion—may display the same nervous behaviors as guilty parties, leading to catastrophic miscarriages of justice. An infamous example is the case of Steven Truscott, a 14-year-old Canadian wrongfully convicted of murder in 1959 based largely on a police officer’s subjective belief that the boy appeared “nervous” and therefore must be guilty. Truscott was sentenced to death before his eventual exoneration decades later—a harrowing ordeal that underscores the dangers of relying on flawed lie detection methods.

Despite overwhelming evidence debunking nonverbal deception cues, the myth persists. Psychologists Bella DePaulo and Charles F. Bond analyzed 206 studies involving over 24,000 observers judging thousands of communications. Their findings were unequivocal: neither laypeople nor experts could consistently identify lies. Accuracy rates hovered around 52%, with individual experiments ranging from a dismal 31% to a still-unreliable 73%. As Bond noted, luck plays a significant role in small-scale judgments.

The stubborn belief in nonverbal lie detection is not just incorrect—it is malignant and dangerous. It undermines the integrity of legal systems worldwide, leading to wrongful arrests, unjust convictions, and in extreme cases, irreversible punishments. As Maria Hartwig, a psychologist and deception researcher, observes, “Everyone thinks they know how lying works,” yet scientific reality contradicts these assumptions.

The consequences are profound. How many innocent people have been imprisoned—or worse—because of pseudoscientific beliefs deeply ingrained within members of the law enforcement community about deception? While the exact number remains unknown, the scale of the problem is undeniable. Until society, and especially law enforcement, abandons these debunked myths, the criminal justice system will continue to risk lives and liberties based on unreliable, subjective judgments. The stakes could not be higher: when lives hang in the balance, clinging to falsehoods is not just inexcusable ignorance—it is gross injustice.

The Delusion of Police in Detecting Deception

A revealing 2005 study that appeared in the journal Law and Human Behavior exposed an alarming truth about law enforcement’s self-perception: officers consistently overestimate their ability to spot lies—often dramatically. When 60 officers were asked to evaluate their deception detection skills, every single one rated their accuracy as “high,” even when their actual performance fell below random chance. The study uncovered something even more disturbing: when given positive feedback, their “notion of their abilities increased,” reinforcing unfounded confidence. Conversely, negative feedback made them “rate their lie detection abilities lower,” proving their self-assessment was based on subjective bias rather than objective skill.

This is not merely harmless hubris—it is a systemic flaw with dire consequences. Police officers’ unshakable (and unjustified) belief in their ability to detect deception can change suspicion into certainty, leading to life-shattering errors. Interrogations turn coercive; innocent people, misread as “guilty” due to arbitrary nonverbal cues like nervousness or emotional reserve, face relentless pressure. False confessions often result from this very dynamic, as do wrongful convictions—all because investigators mistake gut feelings for expertise.

The grim reality? Law enforcement’s overestimation of their ability to detect deception is not just wrong—it is dangerously wrong. It fuels tunnel vision, where officers cling to a suspect not because of evidence but because of their own delusion of infallibility. Until policing reckons with this proven incompetence, innocent lives will remain at the mercy of a system that prizes confidence over truth.

The Persistent and Cruel Myth of ‘Normal’ Behavior

There is no universal way to react to trauma, terrible news, or shocking information, yet law enforcement routinely relies on the false assumption that there is. Police interrogations, suspect screenings, and even courtroom testimony often hinge on the idea that “normal” people who are not being deceptive should behave in predictable ways under extreme stress. This is not just scientifically false—it is profoundly unjust. Human responses to trauma are as varied as human beings themselves: some people scream, some go silent, some laugh nervously, some dissociate, some become hyper-logical, and some shut down entirely. None of these reactions indicate guilt or innocence. They simply reflect the complex, individualized nature of psychological survival. When officers mistake shock for deception, or calmness for cold-bloodedness, they are not detecting lies. They are manufacturing suspects.

The consequences of this flawed thinking are devastating. Innocent people have been convicted because they “didn’t cry enough” after a loved one’s death or because they “seemed too composed” during questioning. Real-life cases show traumatized individuals confessing falsely after being told their reactions were “suspicious,” while actual offenders walk free because their behavior fit an investigator’s personal idea of “normal” behavior. The American Psychological Association has repeatedly debunked the myth of uniform trauma responses, proving that shock, denial, emotional flatness, and even inappropriate laughter are all neurologically typical reactions to extreme stress. Nevertheless, police training still teaches officers to look for “red flags” based on subjective, pseudoscientific assumptions.

Justice demands that law enforcement abandon these harmful stereotypes. Interrogations should rely on evidence—not on whether someone’s grief or fear matches an investigator’s subjective expectations. The legal system must recognize that trauma rewires the brain in unpredictable ways and that no checklist of “suspicious behavior” can replace actual proof. Until then, innocent people will continue to be suspected, investigated, and punished—not for crimes they committed but for emotions they failed to exhibit “correctly” in the eyes of those who misunderstand how trauma truly works.

Understanding Deception: A Complex and Nuanced Concept

Deception is a fundamental yet complicated aspect of human interaction. Despite its prevalence, defining exactly what constitutes “deception” remains a topic of ongoing debate. The concept is far from simple. Deception can occur even in the absence of an outright lie. For instance, imagine a friend tells you it won’t rain, so you leave your umbrella at home. Unbeknownst to them, they misread the forecast, and you end up caught in a downpour. In this case, you were deceived, but no intentional lie was told.

Because deception exists on a spectrum, scholars from various fields—including psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and criminology—have studied its nature and mechanisms. For practical purposes, however, our focus is on identifying deliberate falsehoods, particularly those with serious consequences (high-stakes lies). A useful working definition in this context is:

Deception is a deliberate attempt—whether successful or not—to make someone believe something the deceiver knows to be false, without prior warning.

Under this definition, the terms deception and lie can be treated as interchangeable, allowing for clearer discussion on detecting intentional dishonesty in critical situations.

The Critical Need for Accurate Deception Detection

Throughout history, as human societies grew more complex and cooperative, they developed systems of rules—laws, regulations, and social norms—to maintain order. For these systems to function effectively, members of a society must generally follow them. When individuals violate these rules, they must be identified and held accountable to preserve social stability. This necessity has transformed deception into not just a moral issue but a legal challenge as well.

A fair and reliable legal system is essential for any civilized society. Public trust in justice depends on the principle that only the guilty are punished. When the system fails—particularly in criminal cases—the consequences can be devastating. Tragically, the American criminal justice system frequently convicts the wrong person, often due to flawed methods of detecting deception. Many wrongful convictions stem from the mistaken belief that liars can be reliably identified through nonverbal cues such as fidgeting, eye contact, nervousness (or lack thereof), tone of voice, etc. Law enforcement officers routinely grossly overestimate their ability to spot deception this way, leading to coercive interrogations, false confessions, and innocent people being imprisoned.

Despite conclusive evidence debunking these unreliable techniques, many in the criminal justice system continue to perpetuate the pernicious myth that nonverbal cues signal deception. Training programs and manuals still promote outdated (disproven) ideas, and officers, lawyers, judges, and juries remain convinced of unfounded, discredited, and pseudoscientific claims about deception detection. This persistence not only undermines justice but also erodes public confidence in legal institutions. If society is to reduce the number of wrongful convictions, it must abandon these flawed practices and adopt scientifically validated methods for uncovering the truth.

The Enduring Misconceptions of Detecting Deception

Deception has fascinated humanity for centuries, naturally drawing the attention of psychological researchers. Studies on lie detection have grown exponentially—from just 415 psychology articles published between 1966 and 1986 (about 21 per year) to 206 in 2016 alone. This surge in research reflects a pressing need to challenge misconceptions. By 2019, the Annual Review of Psychology had published its first article on nonverbal deception cues, bluntly stating that “we vastly and consistently overestimate our skills.”

When researchers asked people across 75 countries and 43 languages, “How can you tell when people are lying?” they discovered that while cultural norms shape perceptions, some stereotypes are universal. The Global Deception Research Team (“GDRT”) found that every culture links deception to “actions that deviate from the local norm.” Yet certain assumptions persist worldwide.

In the United States, people associate lying with 18 distinct behaviors, with “gaze aversion”—the belief that liars avoid eye contact—ranking as the top stereotype. Western Europeans share similar views. Common stereotypes about deceptive behavior include several physical and verbal indicators. People often associate lying with fidgeting movements of the arms, hands, or fingers, as well as alterations in how quickly someone speaks. Audible cues like sighing or changes in vocal tone are also frequently mentioned. Some believe personal familiarity is necessary to spot lies, while others focus on various eye behaviors beyond just avoiding gaze—including rapid, involuntary eye movements known as “spontaneous saccadic eye movements.”

Additional physical signs people watch for include sweating, nervous habits like playing with clothing or hair, and general unexplained changes in behavior. Unsurprisingly, however, verbal inconsistencies (weak arguments or illogical statements) tend to be more reliable indicators of deceit than nonverbal cues, but many law enforcement officers continue to devote an unwarranted amount of time and energy scrutinizing nonverbal cues for signs of deception based on little more than an overinflated belief in their ineffectual abilities.

Interestingly, of the 103 deception beliefs cataloged by the GDRT, gaze aversion was least prevalent in the UAE, where only 20% of respondents endorsed it. Gaze norms vary dramatically across cultures. While Western societies often interpret eye contact as honesty, Black Americans, Turkish-Dutch, and Moroccan-Dutch individuals may avoid it as a sign of respect. In Japanese and Indigenous Canadian cultures, direct eye contact is considered aggressive or intrusive. This creates critical misunderstandings—for example, when a White Canadian officer misreads an Indigenous person’s averted gaze as guilt rather than politeness.

The idea that nonverbal cues reliably expose lies on an “individual culture-free basis” is thoroughly flawed. However, these myths persist in law enforcement and popular culture, leading to biased judgments, false accusations, and wrongful convictions. Until we abandon these pseudoscientific assumptions, injustice will continue to plague our criminal justice system.

The Misguided Beliefs of Police in Their Nonexistent Ability to Detect Deception

When you search online for “can police tell when someone is lying,” the results suggest that law enforcement has an almost uncanny ability to detect deception. However, the reality is far more troubling—police cannot reliably determine whether someone is lying based on behavior alone. Maddeningly, articles like “Former Detective Reveals How to Tell When Suspects are Lying” perpetuate thoroughly debunked myths. According to Stacy Dittrich, a former Ohio police detective and self-proclaimed crime expert, “The 911 call and initial statements are among the most important pieces of evidence should a case go to trial.” She further claims, “The entire case can build from those few sentences.” This statement reveals a fundamental flaw in investigative logic: cases are often constructed on shaky, subjective interpretations of behavior rather than solid evidence.

Dittrich’s so-called indicators of deception include calls to 911 that seem “pre-emptive” (reporting a missing loved one “too soon”), a person being either too calm or too hysterical, answering questions with a simple “yes” or “no,” providing excessive details, lying about minor things, saying “huh?,” or offering alternative explanations. While these behaviors as indicative of deception might seem plausible at first glance, they rely on the false assumption that people react uniformly to trauma, stress, or accusations. In reality, human behavior is complex and varies widely. What one person might interpret as suspicious, another might see as a perfectly normal response.

The most glaring issue with these deception-detection methods is their reliance on the idea that everyone behaves the same way in extreme situations—such as discovering a loved one’s violent death, being accused of a crime, or witnessing a traumatic event. Any deviation from this imaginary “standard” is seen as evidence of guilt. This assumption is not only scientifically unsupported but has also led to devastating miscarriages of justice.

Consider the case of Marty Tankleff, who was just 17 when he found his parents brutally murdered in their Long Island home. Investigators decided he was “too calm” and therefore guilty. His claims of innocence were ignored, leading to a coerced confession, a wrongful conviction, and nearly two decades in prison. Similarly, Jeffrey Deskovic was 16 when his classmate was found strangled. Detectives claimed he was “too distraught and too eager to help,” the opposite of Tankleff’s supposed red flag. Deskovic also confessed under pressure, was convicted, and spent years behind prison bars before being exonerated. In the eyes of the police, you are guilty if you are too calm, but you are also guilty if you are too emotional. This is reminiscent of the old verbal slight-of-hand, “tails I win, heads you lose.”

These cases highlight a disturbing pattern: law enforcement’s reliance on pseudoscientific interrogation techniques leads to false confessions and wrongful convictions. Research indicates that the U.S. has a significantly higher rate of wrongful convictions compared to Western European countries, where investigative methods prioritize gathering information rather than extracting confessions. In Europe, interviewers focus on verbal content rather than nonverbal cues, encouraging suspects to speak freely. In contrast, the U.S. favors accusatory tactics that make suspects defensive, increasing reliance on unreliable behavioral cues.

The Failure of Nonverbal Deception Detection

The belief that liars exhibit telltale nonverbal cues traces back to Paul Ekman and W.V. Friesen’s 1969 “leakage hypothesis,” which claimed that suppressed emotions like fear or anxiety manifest in subtle body language. Ekman’s theories gained popularity, inspiring TV shows and police training programs. However, scientific research has since debunked them. There is no consistent emotional response to lying—truth-tellers may feel nervous, while liars may remain calm.

Nevertheless, methods like the Behavior Analysis Interview (“BAI”), which uses 15 questions to assess nonverbal responses, remain in use. Scientific studies have shown that BAI’s predictions fail under scrutiny. Similarly, Ekman’s “micro-expressions”—brief facial movements supposedly revealing hidden emotions—have not held up in studies. In one experiment, participants identified micro-expressions in only 14 out of 700 video clips, and nearly half of those were actually truth-tellers.

“When police are trained in false and misleading stuff, they become more confident, so they become more prone to error,” observed Richard Leo, a professor of law and psychology at the University of San Francisco School of Law and an interrogation expert. “It’s just this loop, this dangerous loop.”

The Cycle of False Confessions and Wrongful Convictions

The criminal justice system’s reliance on coercive interrogation techniques—often triggered by investigators’ belief in a suspect’s guilt based on nonverbal cues that the suspect is being deceptive—has contributed to a significant number of wrongful convictions, a problem that persists despite advancements in forensic science. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, since 1989, about 12% of the 3,478 exonerations recorded since 1989 involved a false confession. Even more striking, the Innocence Project reports that in murder cases where DNA evidence later exonerated the accused, over 60% had falsely confessed—a statistic that has held steady as the dataset has grown.

Before the widespread use of modern forensic testing, courts and legal experts often dismissed claims of wrongful conviction, struggling to understand how an innocent person could confess to a crime they did not commit. However, data from the Innocence Project reveals that 42% of 375 DNA exonerees had falsely admitted to crimes such as rape or murder. This figure updates the earlier count of 252 exonerees, but the proportion remains consistent with patterns observed in the initial 325 DNA exonerations (1989–2014), highlighting the reliability of this trend.

Research from 2003 identified a concerning pattern: when investigators mistakenly believe a suspect is guilty, they tend to use more aggressive interrogation tactics, dismissing denials, and escalating pressure until a confession is obtained. More recent studies confirm that this behavior persists, with coercive techniques—like evidence ploys and minimization tactics—still significantly increasing the likelihood of false confessions. Vulnerable populations, including juveniles, the mentally ill, and the intellectually disabled, continue to be disproportionately affected. The National Registry of Exonerations notes that 63% of false confessors were under 25 years old, with 32% under 18, and 22% had mental disabilities, underscoring their overrepresentation in these cases.

The Human Cost of Relying on Nonverbal Cues to Detect Deception

The stories of those who falsely confessed reveal a systemic failure in the criminal justice system, where coercive tactics exploit vulnerability and override evidence:

Steven Truscott was just 14 in 1959 when he was accused of raping and murdering a classmate in Ontario, Canada. Police found his account deceptive based on his calm demeanor during interrogation, which was viewed as abnormal for a teenager in such circumstances. Though he did not explicitly confess, intense pressure and flimsy circumstantial evidence led to a death sentence (later commuted). He was acquitted in 2007 after 48 years of fighting for justice.

Jeffrey Deskovic was 16 in 1989 when police in New York suspected him of the rape and murder of a classmate due to his “overly” distressed behavior at the funeral, visiting the wake three times, and his eagerness to help, which they interpreted as suspicious and not “normal” for an innocent person. After three polygraph tests—where detectives lied, claiming he failed—he confessed, doubting his own innocence. Despite pre-trial DNA that excluded him, he was convicted and served 16 years until exoneration in 2006, when DNA identified the real killer.

Marty Tankleff was 17 in 1988 when charged with killing his parents in New York. Police first suspected him because he was allegedly “too calm” in their opinion. Detectives tricked him by falsely claiming his comatose father had named him, leading to an unsigned “confession narrative” used to convict him in 1990. Tankleff spent 17 years in prison before being exonerated in 2007.

Juan Rivera, a 19-year-old former special education student, was accused in 1992 of raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl in Illinois. After four days of relentless questioning, he broke down at 3:00 a.m., signing a confession—later rewritten by police—while in a fetal position, pulling out his hair. During the marathon interrogation, he exhibited stress and confusion, which investigators viewed as deceptive behavior. Despite DNA excluding him as the perpetrator and an ankle monitor proving his alibi, he endured three trials and 19 years in prison before being freed in 2011.

Gary Gauger was 41 in 1993 when coerced into confessing to his parents’ murders in Illinois. Interrogated all night, police lied to him about failing a polygraph test and led to his speculation about a “blackout” scenario, which police viewed as a confession. They discounted his protestations of innocence because he seemed confused and exhausted during questioning. Convicted and sentenced to death (later commuted), he was pardoned in 2002 after nine years in prison when the real killers, members of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gang, were identified. Gauger later stated, “Until this happened, I really believed in the criminal justice system.”

Deskovic’s ordeal highlights the extreme psychological toll of relentless, aggressive questioning by police: after hours of deception, he questioned his own reality, and even DNA could not save him from a biased system until years later. Tankleff’s case shows how lies can twist truth, with police ignoring a viable suspect to secure a conviction. Rivera’s breakdown under pressure, Harris’s exhaustion, and Gauger’s manipulation reveal a pattern: vulnerable individuals—youth, the disabled, the exhausted—are prime targets for coercion, often with devastating consequences.

Conclusion

The notion that police can reliably detect deception through nonverbal cues or deviations from “normal” behavior is false, yet this persistent delusion has shattered countless lives. Decades of scientific research have conclusively proven that humans, including trained law enforcement officers, cannot accurately identify lies based on body language, tone of voice, or emotional reactions. Studies consistently show that even the most experienced investigators perform no better than chance (around 54% accuracy), meaning a coin flip would be just as reliable. But despite this overwhelming evidence, police continue to cling to their false confidence that they can spot deception, leading to coerced confessions, tunnel vision, and miscarriages of justice.

The human cost of this arrogance and ignorance is staggering and undeniable. Innocent people like Steven Truscott, deemed “too calm,” and Jeffrey Deskovic, judged “too emotional,” were targeted as suspects because their personal reactions to trauma defied police expectations of “normal,” whatever that is. Marty Tankleff’s composure and Juan Rivera’s breakdown were contorted into guilt, while Gary Gauger’s exhaustion was misread as deception—each case a testament to the catastrophic fallout of this pseudoscience of lie detection practiced by the investigators in those cases.

The National Registry of Exonerations reports that approximately 12% of 3,478 exonerees since 1989 falsely confessed, and the Innocence Project states over 60% of DNA-cleared murder cases involved coerced admissions. These cases are not anomalies. They are the predictable results of a systemic failure in law enforcement’s approach to interrogation, which often values police “hunches” and “gut feelings” over evidence.

Law enforcement’s reliance on the pseudoscience of nonverbal deception detection must end. Research has conclusively shown that there is no universal way people react to trauma or stress. Shock, dissociation, emotional flatness, or even inappropriate laughter are normal neurological responses—not proof of guilt. The science is clear: police cannot detect deception through behavior. However, the greater failure lies not merely in police officers’ mistaken belief that they can detect lies via nonverbal cues or abnormal behavior—but in a justice system that sanctions, legitimizes, and perpetuates their delusions.  

Sources: American Psychological Association; Criminal Legal News; Innocence Project; The National Registry of Exonerations; Bond CF Jr, DePaulo BM. “Accuracy of deception judgments.” Pers Soc Psychol Rev. (2006); Brennen T, Magnussen S. “The Science of Lie Detection by Verbal Cues: What Are the Prospects for Its Practical Applicability?” Front Psychol. (2022); Kassin, Saul & Meissner, Christian & Norwick, Rebecca. “I’d Know a False Confession if I Saw One: A Comparative Study of College Students and Police Investigators.” Law and human behavior. (2005); Vrij, Hartwig, Granhag. “Reading Lies: Nonverbal Communication and Deception.” Annual Review of Psychology. (2019).

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