Child Abuse Law - Developments in law, medicine, and psychology affecting child abuse cases

Thu October 2 2008

Adults Can't Tell When Children Lie

So you think you can tell when a child is lying? You can see it in the quivering of a lip, the uncomfortable shuffling of the feet, the squirming in the chair? You might not be as good as you think, according to researchers Angela M. Crossman of John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Michael Lewis of Baylor College of Medicine. Their work appears in "Adults' Ability to Detect Children's Lying" (Behav. Sci. Law 24: 703-715 (2006)).

Crossman and Lewis say that adults do very poorly at detecting that a child is telling a lie — and even more poorly at detecting that a child is being truthful. Adults appear to have a bias toward believing that a child is lying. Some people seem to be better human lie detectors (those with more extensive lie detection experience and those who work with children), but the general population-- yes, including parents-- scored near or below chance in the study by Crossman and Lewis. The authors caution that there are not enough studies to make firm conclusions, particularly as to why some adults are better at detecting lying.

In the study, adults viewed videotapes of children saying whether they had "peeked" at a toy they were forbidden to look at. The adults then rated the children's truthfulness. When children had lied, the adults recognized that only 42 percent of the time. When children had told the truth, the adults recognized that only 36 percent of the time. In other words, the adults discriminated poorly between lies and truthful statements and more often perceived children as liars.

According to Crossman and Lewis, it is not clear why some adults are better at detecting children's lies, but using their study and others, they postulate that those adults have broader life experiences dealing with different groups of people. They suggest that "individuals who work with a range of children over time, in various contexts, might be able to draw on their diverse and extensive experiences, giving them an advantage in lie detection skills" or may better detect emotions that indicate lying.

In court, Crossman and Lewis observe, laypersons may not detect lies told even by very young children: "[T]he belief that children will be readily detected if they fabricate reports is unlikely to be true, particularly if the child weaves both false and true information to a false report, a situation which could potentially arise following suggestive questioning." Detecting lies after suggestive questioning is particularly difficult, they explain, because the child may have come to believe some portion of his or her false report.

According to Crossman and Lewis, other studies indicate that parents who talk with children about the importance of honesty appear to have an impact. Engaging a child in "moral reasoning" and "promises to be honest" seems to make it easier to detect the child's later dishonesty.