Emotions Revealed - KQED QUEST. Paul Ekman's Research - Paul Ekman International. Psychological sleuths. Telling a little white lie may on occasion soothe ruffled social feathers, but covering up a murder plot or withholding information on terrorist cells can devastate individuals and society at large.
Yet detecting deception often stumps the most experienced police officers, judges, customs officials and other forensic professionals. Research has shown that even agents from the FBI, CIA and Drug Enforcement Agency don't do much better than chance in telling liars from truth-tellers. For example, a recent, as yet unpublished meta-analysis of 253 studies of people distinguishing truths from lies revealed overall accuracy was just 53 percent--not much better than flipping a coin, note the authors, psychologists Charles Bond, PhD, of Texas Christian University, and Bella DePaulo, PhD, of the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Spotting the sneaks can be tough. They're also training law-enforcement experts.