Millennia of legal content criteria of lies and truths: wisdom or common-sense folly?

Siegfried L Sporer; Jaume Masip

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1219995

Millennia of legal content criteria of lies and truths: wisdom or common-sense folly?

Front Psychol. 2023 Sep 12:14:1219995. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1219995. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Siegfried L Sporer¹, Jaume Masip²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology and Sports Science, Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen, Giessen, Germany.
² Department of Social Psychology and Anthropology, Universidad de Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain.

Abstract

Long before experimental psychology, religious writers, orators, and playwrights described examples of lie detection based on the verbal content of statements. Legal scholars collected evidence from individual cases and systematized them as "rules of evidence". Some of these resemble content cues used in contemporary research, while others point to working hypotheses worth exploring. To examine their potential validity, we re-analyzed data from a quasi-experimental study of 95 perjury cases. The outcomes support the fruitfulness of this approach. Travelling back in time searching for testable ideas about content cues to truth and deception may be worthwhile.

Keywords: content; deception cues; deception detection; field study; history; perjury cases; verbal content cues; verbal cues.

Publication types

Review