Advancing the Shift-of-Strategy approach: Shifting suspects' strategies in extended interviews.

OBJECTIVE: Interviewers often face the challenge of obtaining information from suspects who are willing to speak but are motivated to conceal incriminating information. The Shift-of-Strategy (SoS) approach is an interviewing technique designed to obtain new information from such suspects. This study provides a robust empirical test of the SoS approach using more complex crime events and longer interviews than previously tested as well as testing a new variation of the approach (SoS-Reinforcement) that included a strategic summary of the suspect's statement. We compared this new variation with a standard version of the approach (SoS-Standard) and an interviewing approach that involved no confrontation of discrepancies in the suspects' statements (Direct). HYPOTHESES: We predicted that the two SoS versions would outperform the Direct condition in terms of participants' disclosure of previously unknown information. We also predicted that SoS-Reinforcement would outperform SoS-Standard. Finally, we expected that participants in the SoS conditions would not assess the interview or the interviewer more poorly than participants in Direct. METHOD: A total of 300 participants completed an online mock crime procedure, and they were subsequently interviewed with one of the three interviewing techniques. Following the interview, participants provided assessments of their experiences being interviewed. RESULTS: Participants in both SoS-Standard (d = 0.49, 95% confidence interval [CI: 0.21, 0.78]) and SoS-Reinforcement (d = 0.59, 95% CI [0.30, 0.87]) disclosed more previously unknown information than participants in the Direct condition, but SoS-Reinforcement did not outperform SoS-Standard (d = 0.08, 95% CI [-0.20, 0.36]). Participants in SoS-Reinforcement assessed their experience more negatively than those in Direct. No such differences were observed in the remaining two-way comparisons. CONCLUSIONS: The study provides support for the effectiveness of eliciting new information through the SoS approach and illuminates possible experiential downsides with being subjected to the SoS-Reinforcement approach. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Reading Lies: Nonverbal Communication and Deception.

The relationship between nonverbal communication and deception continues to attract much interest, but there are many misconceptions about it. In this review, we present a scientific view on this relationship. We describe theories explaining why liars would behave differently from truth tellers, followed by research on how liars actually behave and individuals' ability to detect lies. We show that the nonverbal cues to deceit discovered to date are faint and unreliable and that people are mediocre lie catchers when they pay attention to behavior. We also discuss why individuals hold misbeliefs about the relationship between nonverbal behavior and deception-beliefs that appear very hard to debunk. We further discuss the ways in which researchers could improve the state of affairs by examining nonverbal behaviors in different ways and in different settings than they currently do.

Witnesses stumbling down memory lane: The effects of alcohol intoxication, retention interval, and repeated interviewing.

Intoxicated eyewitnesses are often discredited by investigators and in court, but few studies have examined how alcohol affects witnesses' memory. The primary aim of the present study was to examine how intoxication (alcohol vs. control), retention interval (immediate vs. one week delay), and number of interviews (one vs. two interviews) affect witnesses' memory. The participants (N = 99) were randomly assigned to consume either orange juice or alcohol mixed with orange juice, and they all witnessed a filmed mock crime afterwards. The recall took place either (a) immediately and after a one week delay or (b) after a one week delay only. No main effect of alcohol was found on the quantity or quality of the witnesses' statements. Both intoxicated and sober witnesses recalled more details, and were more accurate, during immediate compared to delayed recall. For witnesses interviewed twice, an average of 30% new details were provided in the second compared to the first interview, and these were highly accurate. In sum, contrary to what one can expect, intoxicated witnesses with a low to moderate blood alcohol concentration (below 0.10%) were reliable witnesses.

Partners under Pressure: Examining the Consistency of True and False Alibi Statements.

How to discriminate between honest and deceptive alibi statements holds great legal importance. We examined this issue from the perspective of group deception. Our goals were to (a) compare the consistency between the statements of guilty and innocent suspects and those of their respective alibi witnesses, and (b) to examine the moderating role of object-salience on the level of consistency between their statements. Pairs of truth-tellers provided honest testimonies. Pairs of liars were divided into perpetrators and alibi witnesses. Statements of lying pairs were considerably more consistent than the statements of truth-telling pairs. In addition, both truth-tellers and liars showed lower levels of within-group consistency when recalling less salient details about an event. However, truth-tellers' consistency levels were considerably more affected by salience than were liars' consistency levels. These findings contribute to deception theory and have important implications for the real-life task of distinguishing between true and false alibi statements. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

To wait or not to wait? Improving results when interviewing intoxicated witnesses to violence.

Witnesses to violent crimes are often alcohol intoxicated, but few studies have investigated the impact of alcohol on witness reports. This study investigated how alcohol intoxication and time of interview affected reports of intimate partner violence (IPV). One hundred thirty six healthy men (N = 66) and women (N = 70) were randomized to an alcohol group (0.8g/kg for men, 0.75g/kg for women) (N = 70) or control group (N = 66), given juice. Participants consumed drinks in a laboratory setting before they witnessed an IPV scenario. Fifty percent of the intoxicated and sober participants were interviewed ten minutes after viewing the film and all participants were interviewed one week later. For the analyses, participants in the alcohol group were divided into two groups (moderately/highly intoxicated) based on their BAC-level. Ten minutes after viewing the event, highly (BAC = 0.08-0.15) intoxicated witnesses gave shorter, but as accurate, reports as moderately intoxicated/sober witnesses. All witnesses gave shorter and less accurate reports one week later compared to immediately after. However, an immediate interview increased completeness one week later. In general, time and high intoxication made witnesses give less detailed accounts of actions and verbal information, but not of objects. Highly intoxicated witnesses reported less actions and verbal information in all interviews, while information regarding objects was reported to a similar extent. At the present BAC-level, it is beneficial to conduct an immediate free recall interview with intoxicated witnesses to obtain a maximum amount of correct information and minimize the negative effect of time.

Interviewing strategically to elicit admissions from guilty suspects.

In this article we introduce a novel interviewing tactic to elicit admissions from guilty suspects. By influencing the suspects' perception of the amount of evidence the interviewer holds against them, we aimed to shift the suspects' counterinterrogation strategies from less to more forthcoming. The proposed tactic (SUE-Confrontation) is a development of the Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE) framework and aims to affect the suspects' perception by confronting them with statement-evidence inconsistencies. Participants (N = 90) were asked to perform several mock criminal tasks before being interviewed using 1 of 3 interview techniques: (a) SUE-Confrontation, (b) Early Disclosure of Evidence, or (c) No Disclosure of Evidence. As predicted, the SUE-Confrontation interview generated more statement-evidence inconsistencies from suspects than the Early Disclosure interview. Importantly, suspects in the SUE-Confrontation condition (vs. Early and No disclosure conditions) admitted more self-incriminating information and also perceived the interviewer to have had more information about the critical phase of the crime (the phase where the interviewer lacked evidence). The findings show the adaptability of the SUE-technique and how it may be used as a tool for eliciting admissions.

Statements about true and false intentions: using the Cognitive Interview to magnify the differences.

This study investigates the combined effect of the Cognitive Interview (CI) and the unanticipated questions approach on the magnitude of the elicited cues to true and false intentions. The participants (N = 125) planned for either a mock crime or a non-criminal event, half of them were interviewed with a standard interview (SI) and half with the CI. All participants were asked one set of questions targeting their intentions (anticipated questions) and one set of questions targeting the phase in which they planned their stated intentions (unanticipated questions). As predicted, the questions about the planning phase were perceived as unanticipated by both liars and truth-tellers. Furthermore, and as predicted, the truth-tellers' (vs. the liars') answers to the unanticipated questions were significantly more detailed. Importantly, and in line with our predictions, for the answers given to questions about the planning-phase, liars and truth-tellers differed more clearly in the CI-condition than in the SI-condition, indicating that the CI indeed magnified the differences between liars and truth-tellers. In addition, and as predicted, the truth-tellers' (vs. the liars') descriptions of their intentions were more characterized by information related to how to attain the stated goal.

Facilitating particularization of repeated similar events with context-specific cues.

Ninety-five dental care patients participated in a quasi-experiment in which they were interviewed twice about dental visits they had made during the past ten years. Objective truth was established by analysing their dental records. The main purpose of the study was to investigate to what extent context-specific cues could facilitate particularization (i.e., recollection of events and details) of repeated and similar events. A mixed design was employed and the effects of three types of cues were explored: two types of context-specific cues vs. cues commonly used in police practise when interviewing plaintiffs. In line with our hypothesis, context-specific cues tended to be more effective for recollection of individual events than the comparison cues. In addition, context-specific cues generated more details than the comparison cues and the difference was marginally significant. Rehearsal of the memories by telling them to others was associated with an increased number of recollected events and details. The results are discussed from a legal psychology perspective with focus on recollection of repeated abuse.

The Scharff-technique: eliciting intelligence from human sources.

This study is on how to elicit intelligence from human sources. We compared the efficacy of two human intelligence gathering techniques: the Scharff-technique (conceptualized as four different tactics) and the Direct Approach (a combination of open and direct questions). Participants (N = 60) were asked to take on the role of "sources" and were given information about a planned terrorist attack. They were to reveal part of this information in an upcoming interview. Critically, the participants were instructed to strike a balance between not revealing too much or too little information. As predicted, the participants revealed significantly more, and more precise, new information when interviewed with the Scharff-technique (vs. the Direct Approach). Furthermore, and as predicted, the participants in the Scharff condition underestimated how much new information they revealed whereas the participants in the Direct Approach overestimated how much new information they revealed. The study provides rather strong support for the Scharff-technique as an effective human intelligence gathering technique.

Bottled memories: on how alcohol affects eyewitness recall.

This study investigated how different doses of alcohol affected eyewitness recall. Participants (N = 126) were randomly assigned to three groups with different blood alcohol concentration (BAC), either a control group (mean BAC 0.00%, N = 42), a lower alcohol dose group (mean BAC 0.04%, N = 40), or a higher alcohol dose group (mean BAC 0.06%, N = 44). After consumption, participants witnessed a movie of a mock crime and were interviewed one week later. The main results showed that witnesses with the higher intoxication level recalled fewer details compared to witnesses with the lower intoxication level. The amount of alcohol consumed did not have an impact on the accuracy rate. No sex differences were found. The results are discussed in the light of past research. We conclude that more studies are needed before recommendations can be made to an applied setting.

Back to the future: asking about mental images to discriminate between true and false intentions.

In this study we asked participants to mentally travel back to the future. The participants were asked to remember and report on a mental image of the near future. We predicted that participants who, during an interview, told the truth about their intentions would differ in their descriptions of their mental images compared to participants who lied about their future intentions. We found partial support for this overarching assumption. More specifically, we found that more truth tellers than liars reported to have had a mental image activated during the planning of their intentions. We also showed that liars (vs. truth tellers) found the question on the mental image more difficult to answer. However, they did not differ in other aspects (number of words and amount of details reported, and subjective perception of the mental image activated). The suspects were interviewed twice, with an interval of one week, and in line with our prediction we found that liars' (vs. truth tellers') reports were less consistent over time. This study departures from episodic future thought and aims to contribute to the development of a scientifically based interview protocol for discriminating between true and false intentions.

Exploring how members of illicit networks navigate investigative interviews.

This study explored how members of an illicit network navigate investigative interviews probing their crimes. We examined how perceived disclosure outcomes, namely, the projected costs and benefits, affect what members choose to reveal. We recruited N = 22 groups, maximum of six participants per group. Each group assumed the role of an illicit network and planned for possible interviews with investigators probing into the legitimacy of a business the network owns. All participants underwent an interview after the group planning stage. The results indicated that network members navigate the dilemma interviews bring by disclosing information they perceive would likely yield beneficial (or desirable) rather than costly (or undesirable) outcomes. Additionally, much of the participants' sensitivity to potential costs and benefits was explained by the group of which they are a part: different networks likely respond to costs and benefits in unique ways. This work contributes to understanding how illicit networks manage information disclosure in investigative interviews.

Verbal Lie Detection: Its Past, Present and Future.

This article provides an overview of verbal lie detection research. This type of research began in the 1970s with examining the relationship between deception and specific words. We briefly review this initial research. In the late 1980s, Criteria-Based Content Analysis (CBCA) emerged, a veracity assessment tool containing a list of verbal criteria. This was followed by Reality Monitoring (RM) and Scientific Content Analysis (SCAN), two other veracity assessment tools that contain lists of verbal criteria. We discuss their contents, theoretical rationales, and ability to identify truths and lies. We also discuss similarities and differences between CBCA, RM, and SCAN. In the mid 2000s, 'Interviewing to deception' emerged, with the goal of developing specific interview protocols aimed at enhancing or eliciting verbal veracity cues. We outline the four most widely researched interview protocols to date: the Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE), Verifiability Approach (VA), Cognitive Credibility Assessment (CCA), and Reality Interviewing (RI). We briefly discuss the working of these protocols, their theoretical rationales and empirical support, as well as the similarities and differences between them. We conclude this article with elaborating on how neuroscientists can inform and improve verbal lie detection.

Eliciting cues to false intent: a new application of strategic interviewing.

This article examined how to elicit cues to deception when a suspect is asked both about his/her intentions and his/her corresponding past planning, and when the investigator holds evidence on the suspect's planning activities. In a new experimental set-up accommodating the main characteristics of intent, participants (N = 120) either planned a criminal or a non-criminal act. They were intercepted before completing the planned act. Each participant was interviewed in accordance with one of three interview techniques: Early Evidence disclosure or one of two versions of the Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE) technique. All the interviews were transcribed and scored for consistency. As predicted, the liars were perceived as having a higher degree of inconsistency for two of the three relevant comparisons (Statement on Planning-Evidence on Planning; Statement on Intent-Evidence on Planning). Furthermore, using the evidence strategically resulted in differences between liars and truth tellers being magnified, as predicted. This article advances previous findings in showing that by interviewing strategically with respect to the evidence, it is possible to elicit reliable cues to deception when a suspect is asked about intentions and corresponding planning activities.

Subjective likelihood and the construal level of future events: A replication study of Wakslak, Trope, Liberman, and Alony (2006).

C. J. Wakslak, Y. Trope, N. Liberman, and R. Alony (2006) examined the effect of manipulating the likelihood of future events on level of construal (i.e., mental abstraction). Over 7 experiments, they consistently found that subjectively unlikely (vs. likely) future events were more abstractly (vs. concretely) construed. This well-cited, but understudied finding has had a major influence on the construal level theory (CLT) literature: Likelihood is considered to be 1 of 4 psychological distances assumed to influence mental abstraction in similar ways (Trope & Liberman, 2010). Contrary to the original empirical findings, we present 2 close replication attempts (N = 115 and N = 120; the original studies had N = 20 and N = 34) that failed to find the effect of likelihood on construal level. Bayesian analyses provided diagnostic support for the absence of an effect. In light of the failed replications, we present a meta-analytic summary of the accumulated evidence on the effect. It suggests a strong trend of declining effect sizes as a function of larger samples. These results call into question the previous conclusion that likelihood has a reliable influence on construal level. We discuss the implications of these findings for CLT and advise against treating likelihood as a psychological distance until further tests have established the relationship. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Outsmarting the liars: the benefit of asking unanticipated questions.

We hypothesised that the responses of pairs of liars would correspond less with each other than would responses of pairs of truth tellers, but only when the responses are given to unanticipated questions. Liars and truth tellers were interviewed individually about having had lunch together in a restaurant. The interviewer asked typical opening questions which we expected the liars to anticipate, followed by questions about spatial and/or temporal information which we expected suspects not to anticipate, and also a request to draw the layout of the restaurant. The results supported the hypothesis, and based on correspondence in responses to the unanticipated questions, up to 80% of liars and truth tellers could be correctly classified, particularly when assessing drawings.

The mental representation of true and false intentions: a comparison of schema-consistent and schema-inconsistent tasks.

True and false intentions (i.e., lies and truths about one's future actions) is a relatively new research topic, despite the high societal value of being able to predict future criminal behavior (e.g., in the case of an alleged terrorist attack). The current study examined how true and false intentions are mentally represented - the knowledge of which can aid the development of new deception detection methods. Participants (N = 151) were asked either to form a true intention about a future task (i.e., retrieve objects from an office) or to form a false intention about the same task (i.e., prepare a cover story about retrieving objects from an office) to conceal their actual intention (i.e., leave a secret note in the office). The schema consistency of the task was manipulated by presenting participants with a list of office supplies (schema-consistent) or random objects (schema-inconsistent) to be retrieved from the office. The abstractness of mental construal was operationalized as the number of categories used by participants to organize the task-relevant objects into thematic groups. We predicted, based on construal level theory (CLT) and action identification theory, that participants would mentally represent true intentions more concretely (i.e., use a larger number of categories) than false intentions, particularly for schema-inconsistent (versus schema-consistent) future tasks. The results of the study lend no support for these predictions. Instead, a Bayesian analysis revealed strong evidence in favor of the null hypothesis. The findings indicate that predictions from CLT do not readily translate into deception contexts. The results are discussed in light of recent failed attempts to apply CLT to research on true and false intentions, and highlight the need for alternative approaches to the topic.

Drawing what lies ahead: False intentions are more abstractly depicted than true intentions.

The aim of this study was to examine how people mentally represent and depict true and false statements about claimed future actions-so-called true and false intentions. On the basis of construal level theory, which proposes that subjectively unlikely events are more abstractly represented than likely ones, we hypothesized that false intentions should be represented at a more abstract level than true intentions. Fifty-six hand drawings, produced by participants to describe mental images accompanying either true or false intentions, were rated on level of abstractness by a second set of participants (N = 117) blind to the veracity of the intentions. As predicted, drawings of false intentions were rated as more abstract than drawings of true intentions. This result advances the use of drawing-based deception detection techniques to the field of true and false intentions and highlights the potential for abstractness as a novel cue to deceit.

Judges', lay judges', and police officers' beliefs about factors affecting children's testimony about sexual abuse.

The authors examined Swedish judges', lay judges', and police officers' beliefs about factors that may complicate or facilitate children's reports of sexual abuse. Participants (N = 562) rated potential complicating and facilitating factors and freely reported which criteria they considered important when assessing the reliability of child witnesses. The groups had similar opinions regarding which factors are complicating and facilitating. Furthermore, the groups tended to regard emotional factors as more complicating than cognitive factors. When freely reporting criteria that are important when assessing reliability, judges and police officers reported criteria pertaining mainly to the child, whereas lay judges reported mainly criteria pertaining mainly to the police interview. Results indicate that participants believe that children have the capacity to remember and report about abuse but are hindered in doing so by emotional factors. Results also suggest that police officers may underestimate their own influence on the reliability of children's reports.

Interviewing Suspects in Denial: On How Different Evidence Disclosure Modes Affect the Elicitation of New Critical Information.

This study examines how different evidence disclosure modes affect the elicitation of new critical information. Two modes derived from the Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE) framework were compared against an early disclosure mode (i.e., the evidence was disclosed at the outset of the interview). Participants (N = 88) performed a mock crime consisting of several actions before they were interviewed as suspects. In both SUE conditions the interviewer elicited and disclosed statement-evidence inconsistencies in two phases after an introductory phase. For the SUE-Confrontation (SUE-C) condition, the interview was introduced in a business-like manner, and the interviewer confronted the suspects with the in/consistencies without giving them a chance to comment on these. For the SUE-Introduce-Present-Respond (SUE-IPR) condition, the interviewer introduced the interview in a non-guilt-presumptive way, presented the in/consistencies and allowed the suspects to comment on these, and then responded to their comments; at all times in a non-judgmental manner. Both SUE conditions generated comparatively more statement-evidence inconsistencies. The SUE-IPR condition resulted in more new critical information about the phase of the crime for which the interviewer lacked information, compared to the Early disclosure condition. A likely explanation for this was that (for the SUE-IPR condition) the interviewer used the inconsistencies to create a fostering interview atmosphere and made the suspects overestimate the interviewer's knowledge about the critical phase of the crime. In essence, this study shows that in order to win the game (i.e., obtaining new critical information), the interviewer needs to keep the suspect in the game (i.e., by not being too confrontational and judgmental).