Do Interviewers Actually Know More about Falseness in an Inquiry Than They Communicate in a Direct Lying Assessment?1

Abstract

ABSTRACT Research suggests that interviewers' judgments about an interviewee's truthfulness are too unreliable to be useful for important decisions such as fraud risk assessment. The present study examines whether interviewers can distinguish falsifiers from truth-tellers. In an experiment, accounting students (n = 66) interviewed either a falsifying or truth-telling interviewee. Those who interviewed a falsifier perceived the interviewee as thinking harder and less forthcoming, and the interviewer expressed a stronger belief that the interviewee had lied (Lying). A logistic regression function accurately detected more falsifiers with the interviewee's perceptions of thinking hard and forthcomingness as predictors than with Direct Lying assessments. These findings suggest that interviewers know more about an interviewee's lying than they convey in a direct lying assessment. Hence, interviewers may have insight about an interviewee's appearance that can improve evaluations of audit and fraud risk. Data Availability: Confidentiality agreements with participants, written with the assistance of the Institutional Review Board at the first author's university, prevent the sharing of data with others.