Can the Unconscious Boost Lie-Detection Accuracy?

Recently, a variety of methods have been used to show that unconscious processes can boost lie-detection accuracy. This article considers the latest developments in the context of research into unconscious cognition. Unconscious cognition has been under attack in recent years because the findings do not replicate, and when they do show reliably improved performance, they fail to exclude the possibility that conscious processing is at work. Here we show that work into unconscious lie detection suffers from the same weaknesses. Future research would benefit from taking a stronger theoretical stance and explicitly attempting to exclude conscious-processing accounts.