LIE DETECTION ACROSS CULTURES

Can people detect deception by watching a liar's nonverbal behavior? Can lies be detected across cultures? In the current paper, we report the first cross-cultural study to date of the detection of deception from nonverbal behavior. Americans and Jordanians were videotaped while telling lies and truths; other Americans and Jordanians watched the resulting videotapes and made lie detection judgments. Results showed similar patterns of lie detection within each of the two culture but no lie detection across cultures. In both the U.S. and Jordan, people who avoided eye contact and paused in the middle of speaking were judged to be deceptive. The findings are discussed within an adaptive perspective. © 1990 Human Sciences Press, Inc.