Event Details

Join us for our October Seminar Series as we welcome Dr Timothy J. Luke, senior lecturer of legal psychology at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, as he discusses his research: Lessons from Pinocchio: Statistical issues, methodological flaws, and paths forward in the science of human deception

Deception researchers widely acknowledge that cues to deception - observable behaviors that may differ between truthful and deceptive messages - tend to be weak. Nevertheless, several deception cues have been reported with unusually large effect sizes, and some researchers have advocated the use of such cues as tools for detecting deceit and assessing credibility in practical contexts. Examining data from empirical deception cue research and using a series of Monte Carlo simulations, I demonstrate that many estimated effect sizes of deception cues may be greatly inflated by publication bias, small numbers of estimates, and low power. Simulations indicate the informational value of the present deception literature is quite low, such that it is not possible to determine whether any given effect is real or a false positive.

These conclusions have serious implications for both research and practice in contexts in which deception detection is important (e.g., law enforcement and security). For instance, theories about deception are thrown into doubt, given that much of their underlying evidence is so flawed. I warn against the hazards of relying on potentially illusory cues to deception,discussion statistical and methodological issues, and offer some recommendations for improving the state of the science of deception.

Bio:

Timothy J. Luke is a senior lecturer of legal psychology at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, where he is also the Director of the Master’s Programme in Psychological Science. His research primarily deals with deception and its detection, as well as interviewing and interrogation in police and intelligence contexts. Recently, he has begun working on projects related to research methodology and statistics in psychology.

Registration:

The Seminar Series is open to all, free to attend and requires registration. Please feel free to come along and meet with Timothy after with tea, coffee and biscuits.

Please register for free on Eventbrite

For additional queries, please email securitylancaster@lancaster.ac.uk

Supporting content:

DOI for the paper: 10.1177/1745691619838258

Preprint of the paper: https://osf.io/xt8fq/

Supplemental materials: https://osf.io/m6wpk/

Supplementary blog post: https://www.rabbitsnore.com/2018/06/an-attempt-to-reproduce-meta-analytic.html