Résumé
This program of research examined whether individuals' ability to detect deception remained stable over time. In two sessions, held one week apart, university students viewed video clips of individuals and attempted to differentiate between the lie-tellers and truth-tellers. Overall, participants had difficulty detecting all types of deception. When viewing children answering yes-no questions about a transgression (Experiment 1), participants' performance was highly reliable. However, rating adults who provided truthful or fabricated accounts did not produce a significant test-retest correlation (Experiment 2). This lack of reliability was not due to the types of deceivers (i.e.,children vs. adults) or interviews (i.e., closed-ended questions vs. extended accounts) (Experiment 3). Finally, the type of deceptive scenario (naturalistic vs. experimentally-manipulated) could not account for differences in reliability (Experiment 4). These findings are discussed in theoretical and legal contexts.