High confidence, low accuracy: Younger and older adults overestimate lie detection performance

Many individuals believe that they can detect lies; however, empirical evidence indicates the opposite: Humans are poor lie detectors. This overestimation of lie detection performance has predominantly been studied in young adults. Yet older adults might exhibit such biases to an even higher extent due to their age-related changes in visual and cognitive processing. Accordingly, we tested 18- to 36-year-old (n = 221) and 55- to 91-year-old (n = 109) adults in their (a) self-reported lie detection performance, (b) actual lie detection performance, (c) confidence in their judgments, and (d) lie detection cues they normally rely on. Lie detection was assessed based on videos of a person being truthful or lying when describing a picture. This study showed that older and younger adults did not differ in their actual and self-reported lie detection performances. However, older adults seemed more realistic about their performance in comparison to others and confident with their decisions. The predicted age-related differences were also not found. Both groups overestimated their self-reported lie detection performance around chance level and showed the same tendency to rely more on nonverbal than verbal cues. For age differences, older adults (a) reported higher confidence in their lie detection judgements, (b) performed lower in self-reported lie detection, and (c) used fewer cues to detect lies. Future studies should enhance the ecological validity of the study material, providing more context information and creating higher stakes for participants. Overall, understanding lie detection performance and biases across the lifespan can inform interventions aimed at improving deception detection accuracy across different age groups. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).