Behold: You Will Get Fooled Again

Although research has shown that most of us are hopeless at spotting lies, there's been speculation in the literature that a minority of people might be unusually talented fib-detectors. The evidence for these "wizards", as they've been called, remains controversial. Now a new study has tested the relevance of a key psychological construct that one might imagine wizards would score highly on - emotional intelligence. 
Participants who scored highly on the "emotionality" component of emotional intelligence (pertaining to emotional expression, perception and empathy) were significantly less accurate than average at judging which of the anxious relatives was being genuine. This association was mediated by how upset the students felt about the clips, perhaps indicating that their emotional state was affecting their ability to scrutinise the videos effectively.

Purpose. There is major disagreement about the existence of individual differences in deception detection or naturally gifted detection ‘wizards’. This study aimed to elucidate the role of a specific, and seemingly relevant individual difference – emotional intelligence (EI) and its subcomponents – in detecting high-stakes, emotional deception. 

Methods. Participants (N= 116) viewed a sample of 20 international videos of individuals emotionally pleading for the safe return of their missing family member, half of whom were responsible for the missing person's disappearance/murder. Participants judged whether the pleas were honest or deceptive, provided confidence ratings, reported the cues they utilized, and rated their emotional response to each plea. 

Results. EI was associated with overconfidence in assessing the sincerity of the pleas and greater self-reported sympathetic feelings to deceptive targets (enhanced gullibility). Although total EI was not associated with discrimination of truths and lies, the ability to perceive and express emotion (a component of EI), specifically, was negatively related to detecting deceptive targets (lower sensitivity [d′]). Combined, these patterns contributed negatively to the ability to spot emotional lies. 

Conclusions. These findings collectively suggest that features of EI, and subsequent decision-making processes, paradoxically may impair one's ability to detect deceit.

Baker, A., ten Brinke, L., and Porter, S. (2012). Will get fooled again: Emotionally intelligent people are easily duped by high-stakes deceivers. Legal and Criminological Psychology DOI: 10.1111/j.2044-8333.2012.02054.x