Seeing the bigger picture: susceptibility to, and detection of, deception

An extended time window was used to examine susceptibility to, and detection of, deception in rugby union. High-skilled and low-skilled rugby players judged the final running direction of an opponent ‘cutting’ left or right, with or without a deceptive sidestep. Each trial was occluded at one of eight time points relative to the footfall after the initial (genuine or fake) reorientation. Based on response accuracy, the results were separated into deception susceptibility and deception detection windows. Signal detection analysis was used to calculate the discriminability of genuine and deceptive actions (d’) and the judgement bias (c). High-skilled players were less susceptible to deception and better able to detect when they had been deceived, accompanied by a reduced bias towards perceiving all actions as genuine. By establishing the time window in which players become deceived it will now be possible to identify the kinematic sources that drive deception.