And Nothing but the Truth: an Exploration of Perjury

Perjury is a deception that occurs within the legal system. Research indicates that legal personnel, including police officers, detectives, and secret service agents, detect deception slightly above chance levels (Bond and DePaulo 2006 ). Scant research has been conducted to examine the frequencies and motivations of perjury. Thus, we conducted two studies to explore the rates of perjury and incentives to engage in perjury. Study one examined the reported frequencies of perjury, finding that it occurs in 29.9% of the interactions with legal personnel. Study two was designed to examine perjury-like behaviors using the Ariely ( 2012 ) shredder paradigm. Over half (54%) of participants in study 2 engaged in perjury-like behaviors and those who received money as an incentive were equally likely to engage in perjury behaviors as those who did not. Implications for practitioners and researchers are discussed.