Charles F. Bond Jr.

Charles F. Bond Jr. earned a Ph.D. in social psychology from Duke University in 1980 and taught at Connecticut College and Ohio State University before moving to Texas Christian University in 1986, where he served in the Department of Psychology. Over the years, he has published research on a number of topics in social and quantitative psychology, becoming one of the most influential researchers in the field of deception detection. His work has extended beyond academic circles, as his work on international deception has been of interest to the FBI, CIA, National Academy of Sciences, and US Congress.

Bond's most significant contribution to deception science is his groundbreaking meta-analytic research on lie detection accuracy. His 2006 meta-analysis with Bella DePaulo synthesized research results from 206 documents and 24,483 judges, finding that people achieve an average of 54% correct lie-truth judgments—barely above chance. Bond's 2006 article with Bella DePaulo on the "Accuracy of deception judgments" has been cited in the research literature over 500 times. He also conducted pioneering research on cross-cultural deception detection, moving to India for a year to study international deception with colleagues from Jordan and India. His 2011 collaboration with Maria Hartwig applied the lens model framework to understand why lie-catchers fail, and their 2014 meta-analysis examined deception detection from multiple behavioral cues across 144 samples.

Bond's research has had profound impact on both academic understanding and practical applications of credibility assessment. His finding that training does not significantly improve deception detection challenged widespread assumptions in law enforcement and security settings. Cited by 8,469 researchers, Bond has been a prolific collaborator with leading deception scholars including Bella M. DePaulo and Maria Hartwig. His work challenged the notion that people rely on invalid cues to detect deception, instead demonstrating that weak behavioral cues themselves limit detection accuracy.

Beyond his deception research, Bond contributed to social and quantitative psychology more broadly, including work on meta-analytic methods and social relations modeling. His expertise in statistical methodology enabled sophisticated analyses of dyadic and triadic interactions. Though his primary focus was social psychology rather than physiological credibility assessment, his meta-analyses have become foundational references for anyone studying human judgment of truthfulness, including polygraph researchers seeking to understand the comparative accuracy of different detection methods.