Challenging Stereotypes: Comparing Deception Beliefs and Truth-lie discrimination Between Prison Inmates and Laypeople

A sample of 34 male inmates and 38 male laypeople completed a cue belief questionnaire and judged the veracity of video-recorded autobiographical statements. We tested three hypotheses: (1) inmates will differ from laypeople in their beliefs about deception cues, (2) inmates will demonstrate superior truth/lie discrimination accuracy, and (3) participants with more accurate knowledge about the diagnosticity of verbal deception cues will exhibit higher accuracy in truth/lie discrimination.

None of these hypotheses were supported. Overall, we found no differences in cue beliefs between laypeople and inmates. Accuracy did not differ between groups, and there was no relationship between cue knowledge and detection performance.