Strategic Use of Evidence During Police Interviews: When Training to Detect Deception Works

Research on deception detection in legal contexts has neglected the question of how the use of evidence can affect deception detection accuracy. In this study, police trainees (N=82) either were or were not trained in strategically using the evidence when interviewing lying or truth telling mock suspects (N=82). The trainees’ strategies as well as liars’ and truth tellers’ counter-strategies were analyzed. Trained interviewers applied different strategies than did untrained. As a consequence of this, liars interviewed by trained interviewers were more inconsistent with the evidence compared to liars interviewed by untrained interviewers. Trained interviewers created and utilized the statement-evidence consistency cue, and obtained a considerably higher deception detection accuracy rate (85.4%) than untrained interviewers (56.1%).     

Unicorns or Tiger Woods: Are Lie Detection Experts Myths or Rarities? A Response to On Lie Detection “Wizards” by Bond and Uysal

Bond and Uysal (this issue) complain that expert lie detectors identified by O'Sullivan and Ekman (2004) are statistical flukes. They ignore one class of experts we have identified and misrepresent the procedures we use to identify the others. They also question the psychometric validity of the measures and protocol used. Many of their points are addressed in the chapter they criticize. The fruitfulness of the O'Sullivan-Ekman protocol is illustrated with respect to improved identification of expert lie detectors, as well as a replicated pattern of errors made by experts from different professional groups. The statistical arguments offered confuse the theoretical use of the binomial with the empirical use of the normal distribution. Data are provided that may clarify this distinction.     

Psychopathy and Nonverbal Indicators of Deception in Offenders

The current study examined psychopathy and nonverbal indicators of deception in an incarcerated sample. Nonverbal behaviors were coded from videotapes of 45 male offenders telling true and fabricated stories about crimes. Interpersonal features of psychopathy were associated with inflated views of lying ability, verbosity, and increases in blinking, illustrator use, and speech hesitations. While lying, the more psychopathic offenders spoke faster and demonstrated increases in blinking and head movements. Indicators of deception in offenders were somewhat different from those typically observed in non-offender populations. These findings indicate that personality factors may have an impact on nonverbal indicators of deception in criminal justice settings where the detection of deception is of utmost concern.     

The detection of deception with the reality monitoring approach: a review of the empirical evidence

One of the verbal approaches to the detection of deceit is based on research on human memory that tries to identify the characteristics that differentiate between internal and external memories (reality monitoring). This approach has attempted to extrapolate the contributions of reality monitoring (RM) research to the deception area. In this paper, we have attempted to review all available studies conducted in several countries in order to yield some general conclusions concerning the discriminative power of this approach. Regarding individual criteria, the empirical results are not very encouraging: few criteria discriminate significantly across studies, and there are several variables that moderate their effect. Some of the contradictory findings may have emerged because of differences in the operationalizations and procedures used across individual studies. However, more promising results have been reported in recent studies, and the approach as a whole appears to discriminate above chance level, reaching accuracy rates that are similar to those of criteria-based content analysis (CBCA). Some suggestions for future research are made.     

The Reliability of Lie Detection Performance

We examined whether individuals’ ability to detect deception remained stable over time. In two sessions, held one week apart, university students viewed video clips of individuals and attempted to differentiate between the lie-tellers and truth-tellers. Overall, participants had difficulty detecting all types of deception. When viewing children answering yes–no questions about a transgression (Experiments 1 and 5), participants’ performance was highly reliable. However, rating adults who provided truthful or fabricated accounts did not produce a significant alternate forms correlation (Experiment 2). This lack of reliability was not due to the types of deceivers (i.e., children versus adults) or interviews (i.e., closed-ended questions versus extended accounts) (Experiment 3). Finally, the type of deceptive scenario (naturalistic vs. experimentally-manipulated) could not account for differences in reliability (Experiment 4). Theoretical and legal implications are discussed.     

Deception Detection Expertise

A lively debate between Bond and Uysal (2007, Law and Human Behavior, 31, 109-115) and O'Sullivan (2007, Law and Human Behavior, 31, 117-123) concerns whether there are experts in deception detection. Two experiments sought to (a) identify expert(s) in detection and assess them twice with four tests, and (b) study their detection behavior using eye tracking. Paroled felons produced videotaped statements that were presented to students and law enforcement personnel. Two experts were identified, both female Native American BIA correctional officers. Experts were over 80% accurate in the first assessment, and scored at 90% accuracy in the second assessment. In Signal Detection analyses, experts showed high discrimination, and did not evidence biased responding. They exploited nonverbal cues to make fast, accurate decisions. These highly-accurate individuals can be characterized as experts in deception detection.     

侦查策略与欺骗辨析

侦查策略是指侦查主体为实现侦查目标根据需要采取的灵活的方式、方法。那些认为侦查策略就是欺骗或包含了很大的欺诈成分的学术观点是错误的,侦查策略与欺骗在目的、基础、程度和结果上是有着本质的区别的。但侦查策略与欺骗的界限并不是一成不变的,侦查策略在实施过程中仍有可能产生异化,而走向反面遭到否定性评价。因此,对侦查策略要从启动、实施和结果三方面入手进行完善。     

BELIEFS ABOUT THE CUES TO DECEPTION IN HIGH- AND LOW-STAKE SITUATIONS

Prison officers and students completed a questionnaire concerning beliefs about 34 verbal and non-verbal behaviours in high- and low-stake situations. They were asked to consider behaviour in four different situations (two high-stake and two low-stake) and were asked to rate each scenario in terms of both the behaviour that they believed that they would show and the behaviour that they believed someone else would show. For each behaviour they were asked to rate on a seven-point scale how frequently they believed it occurred during deception (when compared to truth-telling). While there were no differences within high- and low-stake conditions (i.e. between scenarios of similar stakes), certain behaviours were believed to increase more in high-stake situations compared to low-stake ones. People rated their own behaviour differently to other people's, suggesting that they believed they would appear more credible in deception situations than other people would. Prison officers and students did not differ in their overall beliefs about the cues to deception in line with previous research. Results are discussed in terms of the roles that high-stake, infrequent, easily accessible situations and unsuccessful deceptions may play in the development and maintenance of general beliefs about the cues to deception.     

Deception among pairs: “Let's say we had lunch and hope they will swallow it!”

Deception research has neglected the fact that legal-workers often have to try to detect deceit on the basis of statements derived from pairs of suspects, each having been interrogated repeatedly. To remedy this shortcoming we conducted a study where each member of 10 truth-telling pairs and 10 lying pairs was interrogated twice about an alibi. One hundred and twenty undergraduate students were enrolled as lie-catchers. The main findings were that (a) overall deception detection accuracy was modest; (b) lie-catchers given access to a large number of statements did not outperform lie-catchers given access to a lesser number of statements; (c) when asked to justify their veracity assessments the most frequently reported cue was ‘consistency within pairs of suspects’; (d) all cues to deception were of low diagnostic value. Psycho-legal aspects of integrating sequential information in deception detection contexts are discussed.     

Parents’ and non-parents’ beliefs about the cues to deception in children

Previous research has suggested that certain groups of experts are better at detecting deception than others. A possible explanation for this finding is that some expert groups have different beliefs about the cues to deception. This study investigated these beliefs in one such expert group, namely parents. Four different scenarios were presented, each scenario depicting a deception for a child at a different age. For each one, participants were asked to indicate whether behaviours would occur more or less frequently during deception. Some differences were found between parents and non-parents for overall beliefs, however there were few differences in their awareness of situational variations, with all participants being aware that deceptive behaviour could change across situations. Results are discussed in terms of the relationship between beliefs and expertise as well as the importance of direct versus indirect experience in the formation of beliefs about the cues to deception.