Effects of collaborative recall: Denying true information is as powerful as suggesting misinformation

We tested whether someone's ability to tell a good story, in terms of the Reality Monitoring (RM) tool, affects the way s/he judges the stories told by others. Forty participants (undergraduate students) wrote down two statements – one about activities they did 30 minutes ago, and the other about a past event. Subsequently, they rated the quality of a target statement written by someone else. We found that the tendency to provide a not so detailed or a very detailed statement was stable across the two statements the participants wrote. Furthermore, this tendency affected how they judged the target statements: The richer a participant's statements were compared to the target statement, the more critical the participant was in judging the target statement. These findings imply that RM is subject to biases which are related to individual differences. We discuss the implications of these findings for applying the RM lie detection tool in the field.     

Does the truth come out in the writing? Scan as a lie detection tool

We tested the accuracy of Scientific Content Analysis (SCAN), a verbal lie detection tool that is used world-wide by federal law enforcement and military agencies. Sixty-one participants were requested to write down the truth, an outright lie or a concealment lie about activities they had just completed. The statements were coded with SCAN and with another verbal lie detection tool, Reality Monitoring (RM). RM discriminated significantly between truth tellers and outright liars and between truth tellers and concealment liars, whereas SCAN did not discriminate between truth tellers and either kind of liar. Implications of the findings for the suitability of SCAN as a lie detection tool are discussed.     

Parents’ Potential for Child Abuse: An Intergenerational Perspective

This study examined predictors for parents’ potential for abusing their children. Two hundred and thirteen Jewish and Arab parents of children up to 6 years of age completed six questionnaires assessing child-abuse potential, childhood history of abuse/neglect, attachment style, emotional control, perceived stress, and cognitive appraisal of parenthood. Results indicated that parents who experienced childhood abuse and neglect scored significantly higher in child-abuse potential than parents without a history of abuse or neglect. A Structural Equation Model indicated that anxious and avoidant attachment mediated the experiences of abuse and neglect in childhood and emotional control; whereas emotional control deficits mediated the relationship between insecure attachment and parenthood as challenge vs. threat, leading to greater child-abuse potential. Clinical implications were discussed.     

Applying the Verifiability Approach in an international airport setting

In the current study, we tested the utility of applying the Verifiability Approach (VA) within an international airport setting. The VA works on the notion that truth tellers provide more verifiable details than liars and has shown to be successful within other empirical deception detection scenarios. Three hundred and ninety-nine airside participants (those originating from Europe, Asia and African) were asked questions regarding their travel plans. We asked participants to either lie (n?=?195) or tell the truth (n?=?204) about their planned activities. The critical question required participants to provide information that would convince the investigator that they were telling the truth. We then transcribed and coded their responses for verifiable details; that is, details that could potentially be checked by an investigator. Overall, truth tellers provided significantly more verifiable details than liars. Furthermore, when taking their geographical origin into account, there was no interaction effect between veracity and region. Additionally, truth tellers provided a higher verifiable/total detail ratio than liars, which again showed no interaction effect between veracity and region. These findings support the suitability of the VA as a cross-cultural veracity tool and implications for its use as an additional security aid are discussed.     

Fading lies: applying the verifiability approach after a period of delay

ABSTRACT

We tested the utility of applying the Verifiability Approach (VA) to witness statements after a period of delay. The delay factor is important to consider because interviewees are often not interviewed directly after witnessing an event. A total of 64 liars partook in a mock crime and then lied about it during an interview, seven days later. Truth tellers (n?=?78) partook in activities of their own choosing and told the truth about it during their interview, seven days later. All participants were split into three groups, which provided three different verbal instructions relating to the interviewer’s aim to assess the statements for the inclusion of verifiable information: no information protocol (IP) (n?=?43), the standard-IP (n?=?46) and an enhanced-IP (n?=?53). In addition to the standard VA approach of analysing verifiable details, we further examined verifiable witness information and verifiable digital information and made a distinction between verifiable details and verifiable sources. We found that truth tellers reported more verifiable digital details and sources than liars.     

‘Language of lies’: Urgent issues and prospects in verbal lie detection research

Since its introduction into the field of deception detection, the verbal channel has become a rapidly growing area of research. The basic assumption is that liars differ from truth tellers in their verbal behaviour, making it possible to classify them by inspecting their verbal accounts. However, as noted in conferences and in private communication between researchers, the field of verbal lie detection faces several challenges that merit focused attention. The first author therefore proposed a workshop with the mission of promoting solutions for urgent issues in the field. Nine researchers and three practitioners with experience in credibility assessments gathered for 3 days of discussion at Bar-Ilan University (Israel) in the first international verbal lie detection workshop. The primary session of the workshop took place the morning of the first day. In this session, each of the participants had up to 10 min to deliver a brief message, using just one slide. Researchers were asked to answer the question: ‘In your view, what is the most urgent, unsolved question/issue in verbal lie detection?’ Similarly, practitioners were asked: ‘As a practitioner, what question/issue do you wish verbal lie detection research would address?’ The issues raised served as the basis for the discussions that were held throughout the workshop. The current paper first presents the urgent, unsolved issues raised by the workshop group members in the main session, followed by a message to researchers in the field, designed to deliver the insights, decisions, and conclusions resulting from the discussions.