HOW REMINDERS OF PAST EXPERIENCES AFFECT PROFESSIONALS' ABILITIES TO DISCRIMINATE BETWEEN TRUTH TELLERS AND LIARS

Accurately detecting deception remains a significant challenge, even for trained professionals. While prior research shows that situational and perceived familiarity can enhance veracity judgments by encouraging reliance on verbal content cues, the mechanisms that influence this effect remain underexplored in applied professional settings. This study tested whether prompting clinicians to recall past experiences with deception would improve their accuracy in lie detection tasks and would promote reliance on verbal content cues. A total of 45 practicing clinicians completed a deception detection task involving video assessments of individuals discussing interpersonal relationships and judged the veracity of each statement. The study also measured self-reported cue usage, confidence, and self-efficacy. A 2x2x3 mixed design ANOVA revealed that familiarity prompts did not significantly improve overall deception detection accuracy, cue reliance, or self-efficacy. However, clinicians in the high familiarity condition performed moderately better in detecting truthful statements, and professionals outperformed non-professionals in lie detection overall. Participants reported using both verbal and nonverbal cues similarly across conditions, suggesting that while familiarity-based prompting alone may not enhance lie detection accuracy, professional experience may offer a modest advantage in veracity judgments. Future research should examine more robust interventions and consider the role of congruence of verbal and non-verbal cues in clients’ treatment interventions.