Police officers ability to detect deception in high stakes situations and in repeated lie detection tests

Thirty-seven police officers, not identified in previous research as belonging to groups that are superior in lie detection, attempted to detect truths and lies told by suspects during their videotaped police interviews. In order to measure consistency in their ability, the officers each participated in four different tests, each of which was on a different day. They were asked to indicate their confidence in being able to distinguish between truths and lies prior to the first test and after completing all four tests. We predicted that accuracy rates would be higher than those typically found in research with police officers; that good or poor performances on an individual test would be partly caused by luck, and, consequently, participants' accuracy scores were likely to progress towards the mean if their performance on all four tests was to be combined; and that officers would underestimate their own performance. These hypotheses were supported.

[1]  Jennifer A. Epstein,et al.  Effects of Importance of Success and Expectations for Success on Effectiveness at Deceiving , 1991 .

[2]  Stephen Porter,et al.  Truth, Lies, and Videotape: An Investigation of the Ability of Federal Parole Officers to Detect Deception , 2000, Law and human behavior.

[3]  Paul Ekman,et al.  The wizards of deception detection. , 2004 .

[4]  Aldert Vrij,et al.  Police use of nonverbal behavior as indicators of deception , 2005 .

[5]  Timothy R. Levine,et al.  How people really detect lies , 2002 .

[6]  A. Vrij.  Detecting Lies and Deceit: The Psychology of Lying and the Implications for Professional Practice , 2000 .

[7]  B. Depaulo,et al.  The motivational impairment effect in the communication of deception: Replications and extensions , 1988 .

[8]  B. Depaulo,et al.  The Motivational Impairment Effect in the Communication of Deception , 1989 .

[9]  Christina T. Fong,et al.  “I'm Innocent!”: Effects of Training on Judgments of Truth and Deception in the Interrogation Room , 1999 .

[10]  Ray Bull,et al.  Suspects, Lies, and Videotape: An Analysis of Authentic High-Stake Liars , 2002, Law and human behavior.

[11]  A. Vrij.  Telling and detecting lies as a function of raising the stakes , 2000 .

[12]  David B. Buller,et al.  Interpersonal deception: II. The inferiority of conversational participants as deception detectors. , 1991 .

[13]  Saul M. Kassin,et al.  “He's guilty!”: Investigator Bias in Judgments of Truth and Deception , 2002, Law and human behavior.

[14]  G. Gudjonsson.  The Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions: A Handbook , 2003 .

[15]  Molly J. Walker Wilson,et al.  Verbal and Nonverbal Dynamics of Privacy, Secrecy, and Deceit , 2003 .

[16]  B. Depaulo,et al.  Detecting the deceit of the motivated liar. , 1983 .

[17]  A. Vrij,et al.  Credibility judgements of detectives: the impact of nonverbal behavior, social skills, and physical characteristics on impression formation. , 1993, The Journal of social psychology.

[18]  B. Depaulo,et al.  Completing Coyne's Cycle: Dysphorics' Ability to Detect Deception , 1999 .

[19]  James J. Lindsay,et al.  The Accuracy-Confidence Correlation in the Detection of Deception , 1997, Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

[20]  Ray Bull,et al.  Detecting true lies: police officers' ability to detect suspects' lies. , 2004, The Journal of applied psychology.

[21]  Judee K. Burgoon,et al.  Does Participation Affect Deception Success? A Test of the Interactivity Principle , 2001 .

[22]  R. Bull,et al.  The influence of personal characteristics, stakes and lie complexity on the accuracy and confidence to detect deceit , 2001 .

[23]  Paul Ekman,et al.  A Few Can Catch a Liar , 1999 .

[24]  Leif A. Strömwall,et al.  Deception detection based on repeated interrogations , 2001 .

[25]  S. Kassin,et al.  On the psychology of confessions: does innocence put innocents at risk? , 2005, The American psychologist.

[26]  B. Depaulo,et al.  Telling ingratiating lies: effects of target sex and target attractiveness on verbal and nonverbal deceptive success. , 1985, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[27]  P. Ekman,et al.  Who can catch a liar? , 1991, The American psychologist.

[28]  Frank J. Bernieri,et al.  Toward a histology of social behavior: Judgmental accuracy from thin slices of the behavioral stream , 2000 .

[29]  A. Vrij,et al.  Telling and detecting lies in a high-stake situation: the case of a convicted murderer , 2001 .

[30]  E. Elaad.  Effects of feedback on the overestimated capacity to detect lies and the underestimated ability to tell lies , 2003 .

[31]  Timothy D. Wilson,et al.  Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. , 1977 .

[32]  T. Feeley,et al.  Self‐reported cues about deceptive and truthful communication: The effects of cognitive capacity and communicator veracity , 2000 .

[33]  B. Depaulo,et al.  Beliefs About Cues to Deception: Mindless Stereotypes or Untapped Wisdom? , 1999 .

[34]  Norah E. Dunbar,et al.  The effects of participation on the ability to judge deceit , 2003 .

[35]  D. M. Green,et al.  Signal detection theory and psychophysics , 1966 .

[36]  Aldert Vrij,et al.  Why professionals fail to catch liars and how they can improve , 2004 .