Veracity judgement, not accuracy: reconsidering the role of facial expressions, empathy, and emotion recognition training on deception detection

People hold strong beliefs regarding the role of emotional cues in detecting deception. While research on the diagnostic value of such cues has been mixed, their influence on human veracity judgments should not be ignored. Here, we address the relationship between emotional information and veracity judgments. In Study 1, the role of emotion recognition in the process of detecting naturalistic lies was investigated. Decoders' veracity judgments were compared based on differences in trait empathy and their ability to recognize micro-expressions and subtle expressions. Accuracy was found to be unrelated to facial cue recognition and negatively related to empathy. In Study 2, we manipulated decoders' emotion recognition ability and the type of lies they saw: experiential or affective (emotional an unemotional). Decoders either received emotion recognition training, bogus training, or no training. In all scenarios, training did not affect veracity judgments. Experiential lies were easier to detect than affective lies, however, affective unemotional lies were overall the hardest to judge. The findings illustrate the complex relationship of emotion recognition with veracity judgments.