The Role of Emotions in Detecting Deception

The ability to recognise the emotional states of others is believed to facilitate the detection of deception, but the exact way in which individuals use emotional information during deception detection has not been fully explored. In this paper, the current way of thinking about deception detection is reviewed and extended by a discussion about the importance of the stakes to the liar in emotion cue production. For the perception of emotion cues, individual differences in empathic ability are proposed to be a crucial moderator of the relationship between emotion recognition and deception detection. This ability may facilitate deception detection under certain circumstances but may hinder accuracy in others. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the way emotions relate to both the process of deception and its detection, and propose possible future avenues of research in this area.