Can Deception by Salespersons and Customers Be Detected Through Nonverbal Behavioral Cues?1

Abstract

Experiments on behavioral lie detection have indicated that observers can detect a communicator's lies with above‐chance accuracy, and that detection accuracy may be enhanced when observers pay special attention to certain vocal and body‐movement cues. The present experiment asked whether deception in (simulated) sales communications by retail salespersons and automobile customers could likewise be detected nonverbally. Contrary to much of the prior literature, deception‐detection in this study was not above chance, apparently because the salespersons' and customers' nonverbal cues simply were not correlated with lying. Though the observers seemed quite suspicious and did not give communicators the “benefit of the doubt”, they could not discriminate the communicators' deceptive communications from their truthful ones. Many—perhaps most—of the lies in sales communications may be told by confident, well‐practiced deceivers whose nonverbal behavior is unlikely to reveal their lying.

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