An Individual-Level Paradigm for Research on Deception Cues: An Urgent Proposal

All psychological theories of deception cues concern explanatory mechanisms at the level of the individual. However, past research on deception cues compares the behavior of people telling the truth and lying at the group level. Unless two conditions are met, that the statistical models do not vary (i) across individuals or (ii) across occasions in time, group-level findings cannot accurately describe the behavior of individuals. We show that these conditions are unlikely to hold for deception cues. This means the current group-level research cannot provide a meaningful test of the individual-level mechanisms key to understanding deception cues. In order to draw meaningful conclusions about these individual-level mechanisms, the field needs a wholly different research paradigm, based on repeated measures designs. We outline a proposal for such an individual-level research agenda and argue that without this development, fundamental questions in deception research will remain unanswered and theories of deception will remain incomplete.