The majority of individuals can determine deception at near a 50% accuracy level or at about the same rate of guessing a coin flip but individuals still believe they are good at detecting deception (Levine et al., 2010; Vrij, 2006). For example, law enforcement officers, parents, and relational partners all tend to over estimate experience as playing a role in their abilities to detect dishonesty (Vrij, 2006).
In reality, experienced law enforcement officers average a few percentage points above chance accuracy detection, parents average slightly higher, while relational partners performed worse than chance of detection of deception (Vrij, 2006). The reason individuals have difficulty detecting dishonestly in relational partners is due in part to an over or under estimation of the individual. People often have a set way or stereotype of seeing their partner and seeing a partner deceptively may be difficult (Vrij,