Counter-Interrogation Strategies among Small Cells of Suspects

Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2004

This study tested the hypothesis that people with accurate beliefs about the cues that predict deception are better at detecting deception only when those beliefs are cognitively available and activated. To test the hypothesis, participants viewed video fragments of people who were being either honest or dishonest. A questionnaire assessed participants' beliefs about the cues involved in deception, and activation of participants' belief cues was accomplished by manipulating suspicion. The results provided support for the hypothesis, where participants whose beliefs were activated and had accurate beliefs were better at detecting deception compared to other participants. Gender differences were also found, where lies communicated by women were more accurately detected than were lies communicated by men.

Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, 2017

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Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1978

Two experiments examined strategies observers use to see through self-presentations. In the first, five male actor subjects lied or told the truth in simulated job interviews. Forty-one observers were moderately accurate in judging the actors' truthfulness. Actors were consistently good or poor liars, but judges were not consistently good or poor. When actors lied, they gave less plausible, shorter answers with longer latencies. Observers seemed to use the plausibility and latency, as well as an answer's vagueness and consistency and an actor's smiling, postural shifting, and grooming, to determine whether he was lying. The second study experimentally manipulated the content of an answer and a nonverbal cue. Observers were more likely to judge a female job applicant as lying when her answers were self-serving. A long hesitation before an answer made observers more suspicious of an already self-serving answer and more certain of the truth of an already forthright one.

Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2013

This Focused Review expands upon our original paper (You can't kid a kidder": Interaction between production and detection of deception in an interactive deception task. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6:87). In that paper we introduced a new socially interactive, laboratory-based task, the Deceptive Interaction Task (DeceIT), and used it to measure individuals' ability to lie, their ability to detect the lies of others, and potential individual difference measures contributing to these abilities. We showed that the two skills were correlated; better liars made better lie detectors (a "deception general" ability) and this ability seemed to be independent of cognitive (IQ) and emotional (EQ) intelligence. Here, following the Focused Review format, we outline the method and results of the original paper and comment more on the value of lab-based experimental studies of deception, which have attracted criticism in recent years. While acknowledging that experimental paradigms may fail to recreate the full complexity and potential seriousness of real-world deceptive behavior, we suggest that lab-based deception paradigms can offer valuable insight into ecologically-valid deceptive behavior. The use of the DeceIT procedure enabled deception to be studied in an interactive setting, with motivated participants, and importantly allowed the study of both the liar and the lie detector within the same deceptive interaction. It is our thesis that by addressing deception more holisticallyby bringing the liar into the "spotlight" which is typically trained exclusively on the lie detector-we may further enhance our understanding of deception.

Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 1997

It was tested whether the same factors people take into account when involved in the decision to lie apply to the evaluation of lies presented in scenarios. The scenarios represented 12 different situation categories formed by the crossing of the ntotivr for lying (social. individualistic, egoistic), the relative importance of the situation (important matter, unimportant matter), and the closeness of the relation between the subject and the receiver of the lie (best friend, acquaintance). The acceptability of lying was evaluated from 2 perspectives (self, others) by 180 women of the general public. The results show that as the interest of the person that is lied to becomes greater, lying becomes more acceptable. As the interest of the liar becomes greater, lying becomes less acceptable. The systematically higher estimations of acceptability attributed to others indicate a false-uniqueness effect.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1997

The authors investigated whether accuracy in identifying deception from demeanor in high-stake lies is specific to those lies or generalizes to other high-stake lies. In Experiment 1, 48 observers judged whether 2 different groups of men were telling lies about a mock theft (crime scenario) or about their opinion (opinion scenario). The authors found that observers' accuracy in judging deception in the crime scenario was positively correlated with their accuracy in judging deception in the opinion scenario. Experiment 2 replicated the results of Experiment 1, as well as P. Ekman and M. O'Sullivan's (1991) finding of a positive correlation between the ability to detect deceit and the ability to identify micromomentary facial expressions of emotion. These results show that the ability to detect high-stake lies generalizes across high-stake situations and is most likely due to the presence of emotional clues that betray deception in high-stake lies. Professional lie catchers recognize that some lie catchers are consistently better judges of interpersonal deception than others. For example, Australian customs agents have noted that the same group of officers seems to top their "contraband recovered" rankings each month (S. Van Der Kooy, Australian customs officer, personal communication, June IS. 1993; see also Kraut & Poe, 1980). Moreover, some American police organizations ask their consistently good lie catchers to train other interrogators (J. J. Newberry, Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agent, personal communication, April 1992). Even observations of professional poker players have suggested that the best players are characterized by their ability to recognize deception across a variety of opponents and situations (Hayano, 1980). Although this anecdotal evidence concerns detection abilities within a given occupation, it suggests that a person's ability to detect deceit is not random or limited to specific people or situations hut may be a skill that generalizes across different people and different kinds of lies. These observations, however, run contrary to years of psychological research that has suggested that the ability to detect deceit is not general but rather situation or person specific. For example, within the context of a single deception situation, studies have found no relationship between a lie catcher's ability to judge accurately the truthfulness of one stimulus individual and his or her ability to judge accurately that of a different stimulus individual (Kraut, 1978, 1980). Moreover, research has found no relationship between accuracy of judgment and gender of stimulus individual (DePaulo & Rosenthal, 1979b) or between accuracy of judgment and culture of stimulus individual (i.e., same culture as judge vs. different; Bond, Omar, Mahmoud, & Bonser, 1990). Taken together, these studies demonstrated that the skill levels and characteristics of the liars seemed to override any potential individual differences in lie catchers' skill. These researchers reasoned that if there is no relationship between accuracy of judgment and liar characteristics within a given type of lie, there should be no relationship between accuracy of judgment and liar characteristics across different types of lies (DePaulo, 1994; DePaulo, Zuckerman, & Rosenthal, 1980). However, this same research showed a strong relationship between ability to detect different emotions and gender of stimulus individual (DePaulo & Rosenthal, 1979b). This failure to find generality in the ability to detect deceit extends to training individuals to

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1992

To explain how people judge that others are lying, an expectancy-violation model is proposed. According to the model, deception is perceived from nonverbal behavior that violates normative expectation. To test the model, 3 experiments were conducted, 2 in the United States and 1 in India. In each experiment, people described acquaintances while exhibiting weird nonverbal behaviors, such as arm raising, head tilting, and staring. Other Ss watched the videotapes of the descriptions and made deception judgments. Consistent with the expectancy-violation model, both American undergraduates and Indian illiterates inferred deception from weird behaviors. Implications of the model are discussed.

Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 1981

Journal of Language and Social Psychology

This article responds to Truth Default Theory (TDT) and Information Manipulation Theory II (IMT2). First, I discuss assumptions made by previous research on deception that TDT or IMT2 question. For example, TDT questions the assumption that nonverbal behaviors are important for detecting deception, and IMT2 questions the assumption that deception requires additional cognitive effort. Given TDT's emphasis on context, I note that additional research is needed to identify antecedents of truth and lies. Furthermore, more research is needed to identify the characteristics of transparent liars. One suggestion is to integrate transparent liar research with IMT2's proposition IM6. Further suggestions are offered about integrating research on prolific liars with IMT2 and integrating research on cognitive load and deception with IMT2.