Deception Detection

February 8, 2006

Centrality of deception
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Interviews
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Importance of coming off as innocent Inability to convey innocence effectively Presentation of false evidence Maximization and minimization

Miranda waivers
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Interrogation
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Deception Detection Issues

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How do law enforcement personnel perform relative to controls and chance?

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Is Ekman and OSullivan (1991) correct?

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What might explain this performance? Who might do better?

Who can catch a liar?

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Ekman & OSullivan (1991)

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Examine ability to detect deception among law enforcement personnel, students, and general population Judge 10 1-minute videos (half showed liars)
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Lie was unrelated to criminal behavior How well do groups detect deception? Individuals? What helps detect deception?
Nonverbals? Microexpressions?

Questions
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How does confidence factor in?

Ekman & OSullivan (1991)

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Results
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Howd everyone do?

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Supports past work: people tend to perform poorly

Only the Secret Service performed above chance M = 64.12%; 53% correctly answered 7+ items

What tactics are associated with accuracy?

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Nonverbals behavior
People were more successful when they listed behavioral cues as basis of their decision But couldnt articulate that as their a priori strategy

Microexpressions
r = .27; 7% of variance.

Ekman & OSullivan (1991)

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Results
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Confidence
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Secret Service, law enforcement personnel, and polygraphers are significantly more confident than are judges and psychiatrists. Why?
Secret Service may have reason to be confident Experience? Training?

Does police performance on task merit the confidence?

Implications?

Ekman & OSullivan (1991)

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Issues
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What constitutes good performance

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Without trying, you can hit 50% by answering in 1 direction for all items Age seems to be a hindrance. Why?
Ekman & OSullivan suggest less frequent interrogation Slipping in old age? Havent learned newest techniques General communicative bias Remember Kassin & Fong, 1999, from last Wednesday: law enforcement personnel have response bias towards deception Not addressed here

Role of age/experience
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Ekman & OSullivan (1991)

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Issues
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What are they even judging?

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Positive feelings while watching nature film or gruesome depiction

External validity? Internal validity?

A better deception detection mousetrap

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Mann, Vrij, & Bull (2004)

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99 British police officers Clips of REAL interrogation footage

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Veracity of each statement was independently verified Watch a tape with several clips from different interviews

Investigate lie detection and truth detection independently

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General pop. truth bias v. police neg. bias

Experience operationalized as interrogation experience, not age/years on force

Mann et al. (2004)

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Questions
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How accurate are police at detecting lies? Does experience interviewing increase accuracy? Do good and poor lie detectors rely differentially on speech-related cues?
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Based on presumption that those interrogated tend to have low IQ and thus do poor job lying Good lie detectors right 50+% lie and truth accuracy

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Does use of fidget cues limit accuracy? Does use of Inbau-recommended behavioral cues limit accuracy?
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Gaze aversion, unnatural posture changes, hand over mouth or eyes when speaking

Accuracy related to confidence?

Mann et al. (2001) Results

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Lie and Truth detection

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Lie accuracy: 66.16% Truth accuracy: 63.61%

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Both significantly better than chance

Better than all but S.S. in Ekman & OSullivan (1991)

Interrogation experience and accuracy

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Lie accuracy r=.18, p<.07 Truth accuracy r=.20, p<.05

Age and length of service not related, as before

Mann et al. (2001) Results

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Reliance on speech cues

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When asked before the task, good interviewers were more likely to mention looking at aspects of the story itself than were poor interviewers Mentioning Ibau behavioral cues significantly predicted poorer performance when trying to detect truth
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Ibau behavioral cues

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Tended to presume innocent suspects were guilty

Mann et al. (2001) Results

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What do good v. poor judges rely on?

Multiple regression

Good
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Veracity of clip (whether person was lying or truthful) Illustrators (hand and arm gestures w/ story) Suspect gender (male seen as more guilty) Veracity of clip More gaze aversion More head nods

Poor
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Accuracy and confidence

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Not significantly related in truth or lie detection

Mann et al. (2001) Discussion

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Why the differences in accuracy across studies?

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Different materials
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Higher stakes, past research shows differences between lie and truth groups amplified Maybe just easier to read these particular people
No student comparison group, so we cant tell

British police officers cannot lie to suspects

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Need to be better at other abilities

Why so poor?
If chance is 50%, why do the most favorable studies report only 60-65% accuracy among police officers? p Reasons
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No Pinnochio
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There is no ONE sign that someone is lying Differences result from withholding emotion, cognitive load, and/or attempted control
Can all work simultaneously Can compete: eye blinking Nervousness increases blinking Cognitive load decreases blinking

Vrij (2004)

Why so poor?
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Reasons
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Heuristics
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Probing heuristic
If someone is questioned and isnt thought deceitful, they most likely never will be Importance of the interview!!!

Representativeness heuristic
How much does a particular behavior resemble a broader classification Fidgeting erroneously believed to signal deception

FAE
Over-reliance on dispositional attribution Guilty before, guilty again bad apple theory Come off as innocent, youre a good guy

Vrij (2004)

Why so poor?
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Reasons
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Failure to account for Individual Differences

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Some peoples natural demeanor just makes them look guilty/deceptive

Expressive people presumed innocent illustrators Introverts Lie less frequently, commit fewer crimes More likely to look suspicious since they gesticulate less

Vrij (2004)

Why so poor
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Individual differences and culture

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African-Americans display greater gaze aversion than do those of European descent

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Same pattern among Turkish and Moroccan Dutch and White Dutch
Eye contact polite in Western cultures, but extremely ruse in others, especially with someone of authority

Speech and behavior

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Dutch citizens from Surinam (South America) make more speech disturbances (ah speech), selfmanipulations (nonessential movement) and use more illustrators
Natural behavior is what White Dutch see as deceptive

Vrij (2004)

Why so poor?
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Feedback hypothesis
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Its not enough to simply make deception judgments for a living You need timely and accurate feedback about your decisions
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Procedural knowledge re: deception detection

So who might do well?

How about criminals?

Criminals and deception detection

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Environmental feedback
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Criminals may live in more deceptive environment May need to be hyper-vigilant to keep from being deceived
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Abused children living in institutional environment significantly better at detecting lies

(Bugental et al., 2001)

Recidivism
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People tend to commit multiple crimes, get feedback on how to be deceptive successfully
Inmates can rapidly produce convincing false confessions (Norwick, et al., 2002)

Criminals and deception detection

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Criminals beliefs about deception

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Most lay people believe that deception is associated with:

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greater movement Less eye contact Less consistency in story, etc.

Criminals beliefs about the following were more in line with research than were students and prison guards:
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Body movement Gaze aversion Consistency Length of pauses in speech Reliance on verbal v. nonverbal cues

Granhag, Andersson, Stromwall, & Hartwig, 2004

Criminals and deception detection

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So do criminals actually make better lie detectors?

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Hartwig et al. (2004)

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52 Swedish prison inmates, 52 Swedish university students Evaluate video of eyewitness to a staged robbery
Interviewed 3 hr, 4 d, and 11 d after attack Eyewitness told to tell what happened or to lie and say the victim initiated the knife attack and hurt himself in the process

Decide whether witness was truthful and rate confidence from 50% (guess) to 100% (certain)
Provide cues used, if so inclined

Hartwig et al (2004)
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Types of cues provided

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Verbal
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Completeness of statement Witness confidence Consistency across interviews Degree of detail in account Plausibility Rehearsed story Body/trunk movements Gaze Nervousness Behavior credibility in general

Nonverbal
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Hartwig et al (2004)
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Accuracy
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Overall
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Criminals:65.4% - sig better than chance Students: 57.7% - chance Criminals: 42.3% Students: 50% Criminals: 88.5% - sig better than chance Students: 65.4%

If statement is Truth
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If statement is Lie
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Why are criminals better?

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Response bias
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Criminals, like cops, tend to disbelieve statement

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Criminals only chose truth 26.9% of the time

Boosts accuracy in Lie condition, and thus overall performance

But notice, whereas police tend to assume guilt and do poorly, criminals assume guilt but apply bias more selectively and show decent performance

What do criminals use to detect lies?

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Cues to deception
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Criminals use same number and same type (verbal v. nonverbal) cues as students Criminals relied primarily on plausibility
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34.6% of truth judgments, 28.8% of lie judgments

Students use it 9.3% & 15.7%, respectively

34.9% of all correct judgments used plausibility

Used significantly more often in correct judgment than in incorrect judgment

Students rely primarily on consistency

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24.1% of truth judgments, 30% of lie judgments

Criminals use it 0% and 5%, respectively

25.4% of all correct judgments used consistency

Not used significantly more for correct judgments, always cited

Criminal detection deception

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Review
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Criminals may be environmentally-trained to detect plausible stories to avoid neg. consequences of being deceived Criminals beliefs about the role of consistency more in line with research findings than are students and guards Criminals tend to be more accurate
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Greater reliance on plausibility, less reliance on consistency in story across time

Wrapping up
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We started with the power false confessions have over juries Weve seen how law enforcement personnel poorly discriminate truth from deception
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Negative response bias Consequences for interview

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Weve seen how innocence can lead people to waive their Constitutional protections Weve seen how the structural and psychological properties of interrogation conspire to constrain suspects options
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Innocence doesnt feed back; seen as guilt Behavioral confirmation, authority, reciprocity

Youve read how details fed to suspects during interrogation can become part of a confession that innocent suspects either accept/internalize and/or embellish themselves

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