{"id":14203,"date":"2022-08-09T12:58:48","date_gmt":"2022-08-09T16:58:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/?p=14203"},"modified":"2025-09-05T13:28:51","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T19:28:51","slug":"how-good-are-finance-pros-at-detecting-deception","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/2022\/08\/09\/how-good-are-finance-pros-at-detecting-deception\/","title":{"rendered":"How Good are Finance Pros at Detecting Deception?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Last week in our article entitled, \u201cFinancial Professionals\u2019 Beliefs about Deception,\u201d we reviewed our scientific paper, \u201cDetecting Lies in the Financial Industry \u2013 A Survey of Investment Professionals\u2019 Beliefs,\u201d published in the\u00a0Journal of Behavioral Finance.<\/em>\u00a0This week we review another of our scientific papers published in that journal, \u201cInvestment Professionals’ Ability to Detect Deception: Accuracy, Bias and Metacognitive Realism.\u201d[i]<\/a>\u00a0Our research, conducted along with deception scientists, was history\u2019s first that explored how good finance pros are at detecting deception. Here is a summary of that work.<\/span><\/p>\n

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General Public\u2019s Ability to Detect Deception<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

Before discussing finance pros\u2019 ability to detect deception it is helpful to consider the success rate of people, in general. As discussed in some of our previous articles,\u00a0the global success rate for deception detection as measured in two separate meta-analyses is just around 54%<\/a>. This is true whether someone is a lay person or a professional, such as someone working in law enforcement or psychology. In other words, people are just slightly better than chance at detecting deception.<\/span><\/p>\n

Crucially, most people when attempting to detect deception rely on pan-cultural fictions about how to do it. Namely, they tend to rely on body language cues or vocal cues. Most of these beliefs about how to detect deception have been soundly debunked.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Overview of the Deception Science Work<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

Our scientific research was done with the cooperation of 215 financial professionals whose demographics were as follows:<\/span><\/p>\n