The Counter-deception Blog

Detecting Deception: A Quick Review of the Research
John M. Grohol, Psy.D.
February 1999; Reviewed: February 2004
psychcentral.com/resources/detailed/3387.html

...Many laypeople, including many Senators and news media, apparently believe that people can make a pretty good assessment of when a person is lying or not. The research illustrates, however, that nothing could be further from the truth.
University of Maryland professor, Patricia Wallace, in ... Psychology of the Internet, states, "Psychological research on deception [...] shows that most of us are poor judges of truthfulness, and this applies even to professionals such as police and customs inspectors whose jobs are supposed to include some expertise at lie detection." ... trained professionals and untrained laypeople, in general, cannot tell when a person is lying.
Strangers ... trying to guess truthfulness in other strangers will do no better than chance in their accuracy. ...

References:
Kohnken, G. (1987). Training police officers to detect deceptive eye witness statements: Does it work? Social Behavior, 2, 1-17.
Kraut, R.E., & Poe, D. (1980). Behavioral roots of person perception: The deception judgments of customs inspectors and laymen. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 784-798.
Wallace, P. (In press). Psychology of the Internet. New York: Cambridge University Press.
ReferenceGrohol, J.M. (Feb 1999). Detecting deception: A quick review of the psychological research. [Online].