Deception Research

My interest is in the lying and lie-detecting that goes on in ordinary social life, when people have no polygraphs, brain scans, or any other bells or whistles to help them figure out what is really going on. I have studied lying for more than two decades, and published dozens of papers and chapters. My research and writing address questions such as, How often do people lie? To whom do they tell their lies? Can people tell when others are lying? I have also written about moral issues in my chapter, “The many faces of lies.”

My media appearances about lying have included CBS Sunday Morning, on Sunday June 10, 2007, the Early Show on September 28, 2007, and the Today show on February 6, 2006, and many others in previous years. I have also discussed lying on NPR and many other radio programs.

In print, my deception work has been described in the article "Duped," by Margaret Talbot, in the July 2, 2007 New Yorker; in "Looking for the Lie," by Robin Marantz Henig in her February 5, 2006 cover story for the New York Times Magazine; in "Almost everyone lies, seeing it as kindness," by Shankar Vedantam on February 19, 2007 in the Washington Post; and in "Airport security arsenal adds behavior detection," by Thomas Frank on September 25, 2007 in USA Today. My research on liars and their lies has been described in many other newspapers and magazines as well.