Why professionals fail to catch liars and how they can improve

Vrij, Aldert

University of Portsmouth, UK

*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Aldert Vrij, University of Portsmouth, Psychology Department, King Henry Building, King Henry 1 Street, Portsmouth PO1 2DY, UK (e-mail: [email protected]).

Legal and Criminological Psychology 9(2):p 159-181, September 2004.

In the first part of this article, I briefly review research findings that show that professional lie catchers, such as police officers, are generally rather poor at distinguishing between truths and lies. I believe that there are many reasons contributing towards this poor ability, and give an overview of these reasons in the second part of this article. I also believe that professionals could become better lie detectors and explain how in the final part of this article.