Effects of self‐monitoring and familiarity on deception detection1

This study investigated the effects of familiarity and self‐monitoring on observer accuracy in deception detection. Observers varying in self‐reported self‐monitoring made judgments of truthfulness or lying after either exposure or no exposure to segments of a communicator's truthful behavior. Results indicated that observers familiar with a communicator's truthful behavior were significantly more accurate than those who were not; that accuracy increased significantly as self‐reported self‐monitoring increased; and that there was no significant interaction between self‐monitoring and familiarity.