Edelstein Robin S, Luten Tanya L, Ekman Paul, Goodman Gail S
Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, USA.
Law Hum Behav. 2006 Feb;30(1):1-10. doi: 10.1007/s10979-006-9031-2.
In this study, observers' abilities to detect lies in children and adults were examined. Adult participants observed videotaped interviews of both children and adults either lying or telling the truth about having been touched by a male research assistant. As hypothesized, observers detected children's lies more accurately than adults' lies; however, adults' truthful statements were detected more accurately than were children's. Further analyses revealed that observers were biased toward judging adults' but not children's statements as truthful. Finally, consistent with the notion that there are stable individual differences in the ability to detect lies, observers who were highly accurate in detecting children's lies were similarly accurate in detecting adults' lies. Implications of these findings for understanding lie-detection accuracy are discussed, as are potential applications to the forensic context.
在本研究中，对观察者辨别儿童和成人说谎的能力进行了考察。成年参与者观看了儿童和成人关于是否被男性研究助理触摸而说谎或说实话的录像访谈。正如所假设的那样，观察者辨别儿童谎言比辨别成人谎言更准确；然而，辨别成人的真实陈述比辨别儿童的更准确。进一步分析表明，观察者在判断成人陈述为真实方面存在偏差，而判断儿童陈述时则不存在这种偏差。最后，与存在稳定的个体辨别谎言能力差异这一观点一致的是，在辨别儿童谎言方面非常准确的观察者在辨别成人谎言方面同样准确。讨论了这些发现对理解测谎准确性的意义，以及在法医背景下的潜在应用。
