Pitfalls and Opportunities in Nonverbal and Verbal Lie Detection

Psychophysiological indexes in the detection of deception: A systematic review

Robust evidence on deception detection highlights that humans perform at chance level, especially when a truth-default cognitive threshold is crossed by the deceiver. This systematic review examined whether identification of deceptive stimuli elicits specific physiological responses in the detectors of deception. Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, five databases were searched for human studies that evaluate physiological reactivity to deceptive stimuli, along with behavioural responses. Eleven studies (thirteen experiments) were included in a qualitative synthesis. Results show that deception detection is associated with higher activity in the prefrontal cortex and temporal lobe, with a specific involvement of the temporoparietal junction, alongside the cerebellum and cingulate cortex. Specific changes in other physiological activities (i.e., heart rate, skin temperature, motor excitability) also seem to be differently associated with the detection of deception. This review suggests that detecting deception should be considered a complex decision-making process and indicates that specific physiological activity is present across different types of deceptive stimuli. Implications are promising for further developments in security and forensic sciences.

Different neural correlates of deception: Crafting high and low creative scams

Deception is a complex social behavior that manifests in various forms, including scams. To successfully deceive victims, liars have to continually devise novel scams. This ability to create novel scams represents one kind of malevolent creativity, referred to as lying. This study aimed to explore different neural substrates involved in the generation of high and low creative scams. A total of 40 participants were required to design several creative scams, and their cortical activity was recorded by functional near-infrared spectroscopy. The results revealed that the right frontopolar cortex (FPC) was significantly active in scam generation. This region associated with theory of mind may be a key region for creating novel and complex scams. Moreover, creativity-related regions were positively involved in creative scams, while morality-related areas showed negative involvement. This suggests that individuals might attempt to use malevolent creativity while simultaneously minimizing the influence of moral considerations. The right FPC exhibited increased coupling with the right precentral gyrus during the design of high-harmfulness scams, suggesting a diminished control over immoral thoughts in the generation of harmful scams. Additionally, the perception of the victim's emotions (related to right pre-motor cortex) might diminish the quality of highly original scams. Furthermore, an efficient and cohesive neural coupling state appears to be a key factor in generating high-creativity scams. These findings suggest that the right FPC was crucial in scam creation, highlighting a neural basis for balancing malevolent creativity against moral considerations in high-creativity deception.

Finnish district judges' assessments of live versus video-mediated party statements in court

The increase in remote hearings after the COVID-19 pandemic presents an urgent need to examine how judges assess video-mediated witness and party statements compared with live statements. There is currently a limited body of research on this subject. As for the assessment itself, professionals within the judicial system sometimes believe they can detect deception based on visible cues such as body language and emotional expression. Research has, however, shown that lies cannot be detected based on such cues. The Finnish Supreme Court has also given rulings in accordance with the scientific literature. In this study, we used a survey to investigate how much importance a Finnish sample of district judges (N = 47) gave to several variables pertaining to the statement or the statement giver, such as body language and emotional expression. We also investigated the association between the judges' beliefs about the relevance of body language and emotional expression and their preference for live statements or statements via videoconference. The judges reported giving more importance to body language and emotional expression than legal psychology research and Finnish Supreme Court rulings would call for. Our results also indicated that there was a slight bias to assess live statements more favorably than statements given via videoconference, as well as a slight bias in favor of the injured party. More effort must be put into making judges and Supreme Courts aware of findings in legal psychology to avoid biases based on intuitive reasoning where it is contrary to scientific evidence.

Mock Juror Perceptions of Eyewitness Reports Given by Children with Intellectual Disabilities

Previous research suggests that an eyewitness credibility bias can arise when mock jurors are informed of a child's disability diagnosis. The aim of the present study was to examine mock jurors' lie-detection accuracy and credibility perceptions when assessing eyewitness testimonies provided by children diagnosed with an intellectual disability. Adult mock jurors (N = 217; half informed of the child's disability status) read four transcriptions from interviews with children (ages 10 to 15) diagnosed with an intellectual disability before evaluating the credibility and truthfulness of each eyewitness report. The mock jurors' lie-detection accuracy of the eyewitness reports produced by children with an intellectual disability (55.76%) was found to be similar to prior lie-detection research involving typically developing populations. Furthermore, there were no differences in the lie-detection accuracy and credibility ratings between mock-jurors who were informed of the child's disability when compared to those who were not informed. Although mock jurors perceived the children's testimony to have low credibility, they seemed reluctant to consider many of these testimonies to be false. The current findings also suggest that the disclosure of a disability may not independently cause worsened perceptions of child eyewitnesses.

Detecting lies in investigative interviews through the analysis of response latencies and error rates to unexpected questions

In this study, we propose an approach to detect deception during investigative interviews by integrating response latency and error analysis with the unexpected question technique. Sixty participants were assigned to an honest (n = 30) or deceptive group (n = 30). The deceptive group was instructed to memorize the false biographical details of a fictitious identity. Throughout the interviews, participants were presented with a randomized sequence of control, expected, and unexpected open-ended questions about identity. Responses were audio recorded for detailed examination. Our findings indicate that deceptive participants showed markedly longer latencies and higher error rates when answering expected (requiring deception) and unexpected questions (for which premeditated deception was not possible). Longer response latencies were also observed in participants attempting deception when answering control questions (which necessitated truthful answers). Moreover, a within-subject analysis highlighted that responding to unexpected questions significantly impaired individuals' performance compared to answering control and expected questions. Leveraging machine-learning algorithms, our approach attained a classification accuracy of 98% in distinguishing deceptive and honest participants. Additionally, a classification analysis on single response levels was conducted. Our findings underscore the effectiveness of merging response latency metrics and error rates with unexpected questioning as a robust method for identity deception detection in investigative interviews. We also discuss significant implications for enhancing interview strategies.

An Examination of the Motives for Attributing and Interpreting Deception in People with Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment

The aim of the present study was to examine how a person with amnestic mild cognitive impairment perceives the phenomenon of deception. Amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) usually represents the prodromal phase of Alzheimer's disease (AD), with patients showing memory impairment but with normal activities of daily living. It was expected that aMCI patients would face difficulties in the attribution and interpretation of deceptive behavior due to deficits regarding their diagnosis. The main sample of the study consisted of 76 older adults who were patients of a daycare center diagnosed with aMCI. A sample of 55 highly educated young adults was also examined in the same experiment to qualitatively compare their performance with that of aMCI patients. Participants were assigned a scenario where a hypothetical partner (either a friend or a stranger) was engaged in a task in which the partner could lie to boost their earnings at the expense of the participant. The results showed that aMCI patients, even if they understood that something was going wrong, did not invest in interpretations of potential deception and tended to avoid searching for confirmative information related to the hypothetical lie of their partner compared to highly educated young adults. It seems that aMCI patients become somehow "innocent", and this is discussed in terms of cognitive impairment and/or socioemotional selectivity.

Mining Bodily Cues to Deception

A significant body of research has investigated potential correlates of deception and bodily behavior. The vast majority of these studies consider discrete, subjectively coded bodily movements such as specific hand or head gestures. Such studies fail to consider quantitative aspects of body movement such as the precise movement direction, magnitude and timing. In this paper, we employ an innovative data mining approach to systematically study bodily correlates of deception. We re-analyze motion capture data from a previously published deception study, and experiment with different data coding options. We report how deception detection rates are affected by variables such as body part, the coding of the pose and movement, the length of the observation, and the amount of measurement noise. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of a data mining approach, with detection rates above 65%, significantly outperforming human judgement (52.80%). Owing to the systematic analysis, our analyses allow for an understanding of the importance of various coding factor. Moreover, we can reconcile seemingly discrepant findings in previous research. Our approach highlights the merits of data-driven research to support the validation and development of deception theory.

Sorting Insiders From Co-Workers: Remote Synchronous Computer-Mediated Triage for Investigating Insider Attacks

OBJECTIVE

Develop and investigate the potential of a remote, computer-mediated and synchronous text-based triage, which we refer to as InSort, for quickly highlighting persons of interest after an insider attack.

BACKGROUND

Insiders maliciously exploit legitimate access to impair the confidentiality and integrity of organizations. The globalisation of organisations and advancement of information technology means employees are often dispersed across national and international sites, working around the clock, often remotely. Hence, investigating insider attacks is challenging. However, the cognitive demands associated with masking insider activity offer opportunities. Drawing on cognitive approaches to deception and understanding of deception-conveying features in textual responses, we developed InSort, a remote computer-mediated triage.

METHOD

During a 6-hour immersive simulation, participants worked in teams, examining password protected, security sensitive databases and exchanging information during an organized crime investigation. Twenty-five percent were covertly incentivized to act as an 'insider' by providing information to a provocateur.

RESULTS

Responses to InSort questioning revealed insiders took longer to answer investigation relevant questions, provided impoverished responses, and their answers were less consistent with known evidence about their behaviours than co-workers.

CONCLUSION

Findings demonstrate InSort has potential to expedite information gathering and investigative processes following an insider attack.

APPLICATION

InSort is appropriate for application by non-specialist investigators and can be quickly altered as a function of both environment and event. InSort offers a clearly defined, well specified, approach for use across insider incidents, and highlights the potential of technology for supporting complex time critical investigations.

Machine learning for cognitive behavioral analysis: datasets, methods, paradigms, and research directions

Human behaviour reflects cognitive abilities. Human cognition is fundamentally linked to the different experiences or characteristics of consciousness/emotions, such as joy, grief, anger, etc., which assists in effective communication with others. Detection and differentiation between thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are paramount in learning to control our emotions and respond more effectively in stressful circumstances. The ability to perceive, analyse, process, interpret, remember, and retrieve information while making judgments to respond correctly is referred to as Cognitive Behavior. After making a significant mark in emotion analysis, deception detection is one of the key areas to connect human behaviour, mainly in the forensic domain. Detection of lies, deception, malicious intent, abnormal behaviour, emotions, stress, etc., have significant roles in advanced stages of behavioral science. Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning (AI/ML) has helped a great deal in pattern recognition, data extraction and analysis, and interpretations. The goal of using AI and ML in behavioral sciences is to infer human behaviour, mainly for mental health or forensic investigations. The presented work provides an extensive review of the research on cognitive behaviour analysis. A parametric study is presented based on different physical characteristics, emotional behaviours, data collection sensing mechanisms, unimodal and multimodal datasets, modelling AI/ML methods, challenges, and future research directions.

Adult's veracity judgments of Black and White children's statements: the role of perceiver and target race and prejudice-related concerns

Introduction

Seldom has work investigated systematic biases in adults' truth and lie judgments of children's reports. Research demonstrates that adults tend to exhibit a bias toward believing a child is telling the truth, but it is unknown whether this truth bias applies equally to all children. Given the pervasiveness of racial prejudice and anti-Black racism in the United States, the current study examined whether adults are more or less likely to believe a child is telling the truth based on the race of the child (Black or White), the race of the adult perceiver (Black or White), and the perceiver's concerns regarding appearing unprejudiced.

Methods

Using an online data-collection platform, 593 Black and White American adults reviewed fictitious vignettes in which a child denied committing a misbehavior at school (e.g., damaging a laptop). The race of the child in the vignette was manipulated using an AI-generated photo of either a Black child or a White child. After reading each story, participants provided a categorical veracity judgment by indicating whether they believed the child in the story was lying (and therefore committed the misdeed) or telling the truth (and was innocent), as well as rated how honest or deceptive the child was being on a continuous scale. Participants also completed questionnaires assessing their internal (personal) and external (normative) motivations to respond in non-prejudiced ways.

Results and discussion

Results indicated that systematic racial biases occur in adults' veracity judgments of children's statements. Both Black and White participants exhibited a truth bias in their veracity judgments of Black children, but not when evaluating the deceptiveness of White children. Consistent with the prejudice-related concerns hypothesis, the observed truth bias toward Black children was moderated by individual differences in participants' desire to respond without prejudice and whether those motivations stem from external or internal sources. The current findings present novel evidence regarding racial bias and prejudice-related concerns as potential barriers to making veracity judgments of children's statements and, ultimately, successful lie detection.

The Impact of Information From Mental Health Care Providers on Decisions About State Compensation for Violent Crime Victimization

In the Netherlands, as in many other countries, victims of intentionally committed violent crimes may apply for state compensation if the offender is unknown or unable to pay for the damages of the crime. This state compensation scheme is run by the Dutch Violent Offences Compensation Fund (VOCF). Lawyers who work for this fund need to evaluate applicants´ eligibility for state compensation on the basis of two criteria: (1) the plausibility of the applicant's victimization story and (2) the severity of the injury sustained by the applicant. Whether these criteria are fulfilled is largely left to the discretion of the lawyer who evaluates the application. This discretionary power makes the decision-making process prone to biased outcomes. Inspired by previous research, this study investigated whether information from mental health care providers, such as psychiatrists or clinical psychologists, serves as a potential source of bias. Although this type of information may or should sometimes be used to evaluate an applicant's eligibility for compensation, in most cases it should not affect the outcome of this evaluation because of its potential unreliability. A statistical association between availability of information from mental health care providers and adjudication of state compensation is therefore not to be expected. Analyzing 246 applications submitted to the Dutch VOCF between July 1st 2016 and July 1st 2017, this study tested the empirical validity of this expectation. Results indicated that the availability of information of mental health care providers was associated with adjudication of state compensation. This finding was discussed in view of the literature on heuristic thinking and biased decision making and the study's limitations.

Cross cultural verbal cues to deception: truth and lies in first and second language forensic interview contexts

Introduction

The verbal deception literature is largely based upon North American and Western European monolingual English speaker interactions. This paper extends this literature by comparing the verbal behaviors of 88 south Asian bilinguals, conversing in either first (Hindi) or second (English) languages, and 48 British monolinguals conversing in English.

Methods

All participated in a live event following which they were interviewed having been incentivized to be either deceptive or truthful. Event details, complications, verifiable sources, and plausibility ratings were analyzed as a function of veracity, language and culture.

Results

Main effects revealed cross cultural similarities in both first and second language interviews whereby all liar's verbal responses were impoverished and rated as less plausible than truthtellers. However, a series of cross-cultural interactions emerged whereby bi-lingual South Asian truthtellers and liars interviewed in first and second languages exhibited varying patterns of verbal behaviors, differences that have the potential to trigger erroneous assessments in practice.

Discussion

Despite limitations, including concerns centered on the reductionary nature of deception research, our results highlight that while cultural context is important, impoverished, simple verbal accounts should trigger a 'red flag' for further attention irrespective of culture or interview language, since the cognitive load typically associated with formulating a deceptive account apparently emerges in a broadly similar manner.

The Role of Cognition in Dishonest Behavior

Dishonesty has received increased attention from many professionals in recent years for its relevance in many social areas such as finance and psychology, among others. Understanding the mechanisms underlying dishonesty and the channels in which dishonesty operates could enable the detection and even prevention of dishonest behavior. However, the study of dishonesty is a challenging endeavor; dishonesty is a complex behavior because it imposes a psychological and cognitive burden. The study of this burden has fostered a new research trend that focuses on cognition’s role in dishonesty. This paper reviews the theoretical aspects of how such cognitive processes modulate dishonest behavior. We will pay special attention to executive functions such as inhibitory processes, working memory, or set-shifting that may modulate the decision to be (dis)honest. We also account for some frameworks in cognitive and social psychology that may help understand dishonesty, such as the Theory of Mind, the role of creative processes, and discourse analyses within language studies. Finally, we will discuss some specific cognitive-based models that integrate cognitive mechanisms to explain dishonesty. We show that cognition and dishonest behavior are firmly related and that there are several important milestones to reach in the future to advance the understanding of dishonesty in our society.

The path of dishonesty: identification of mental processes with electrical neuroimaging

Much research finds that lying takes longer than truth-telling. Yet, the source of this response time difference remains elusive. Here, we assessed the spatiotemporal evolution of electrical brain activity during honesty and dishonesty in 150 participants using a sophisticated electrical neuroimaging approach-the microstate approach. This uniquely positioned us to identify and contrast the entire chain of mental processes involved during honesty and dishonesty. Specifically, we find that the response time difference is the result of an additional late-occurring mental process, unique to dishonest decisions, interrupting the antecedent mental processing. We suggest that this process inhibits the activation of the truth, thus permitting the execution of the lie. These results advance our understanding of dishonesty and clarify existing theories about the role of increased cognitive load. More broadly, we demonstrate the vast potential of our approach to illuminate the temporal organization of mental processes involved in decision-making.

The Conversational Circumplex: Identifying, prioritizing, and pursuing informational and relational motives in conversation

The meaning of success in conversation depends on people's goals. Often, individuals pursue multiple goals simultaneously, such as establishing shared understanding, making a favorable impression, having fun, or persuading a conversation partner. In this article, we introduce a novel theoretical framework, the Conversational Circumplex, to classify conversational motives along two key dimensions: 1) informational: the extent to which a speaker's motive focuses on giving and/or receiving accurate information; and 2) relational: the extent to which a speaker's motive focuses on building the relationship. We use the Conversational Circumplex to underscore the multiplicity of conversational goals that people hold and highlight the potential for individuals to have conflicting conversational goals (both intrapersonally and interpersonally) that make successful conversation a difficult challenge.

Do Not Tell Me More; You Are Honest: A Preconceived Honesty Bias

According to the previous literature, only a few papers found better accuracy than a chance to detect dishonesty, even when more information and verbal cues (VCs) improve precision in detecting dishonesty. A new classification of dishonesty profiles has recently been published, allowing us to study if this low success rate happens for all people or if some people have higher predictive ability. This paper aims to examine if (dis)honest people can detect better/worse (un)ethical behavior of others. With this in mind, we designed one experiment using videos from one of the most popular TV shows in the UK where contestants make a (dis)honesty decision upon gaining or sharing a certain amount of money. Our participants from an online MTurk sample (N = 1,582) had to determine under different conditions whether the contestants would act in an (dis)honest way. Three significant results emerged from these two experiments. First, accuracy in detecting (dis)honesty is not different than chance, but submaximizers (compared to maximizers) and radical dishonest people (compare to non-radicals) are better at detecting honesty, while there is no difference in detecting dishonesty. Second, more information and VCs improve precision in detecting dishonesty, but honesty is better detected using only non-verbal cues (NVCs). Finally, a preconceived honesty bias improves specificity (honesty detection accuracy) and worsens sensitivity (dishonesty detection accuracy).

Utilizing the Activation-Decision-Construction-Action Theory to predict children's hypothetical decisions to deceive

The Decision component of the Activation-Decision-Construction-Action-Theory (ADCAT) utilizes a cost-benefit formula to explain the cognitive, motivational and social processes involved in deception. Three prior studies suggest that ADCAT can be used to predict adults' future deceptive behavior; however, no study has assessed the potential relevance of ADCAT with children. The present study is the first to date to examine whether this cost-benefit formula can predict children's hypothetical decisions to tell three types of lies, and whether there are specific developmental factors that need to be considered. The results indicate that the cost-benefit formula was only effective for predicting children's hypothetical lies for self-gain at no cost to another (Self-No Cost lies) and lies for others when there was a personal cost (Other-Cost to Self). More specifically, expected value of telling the truth was related to lower willingness to tell hypothetical Self-No Cost and Other-Cost to Self lies. On the other hand, the expected value of lying was not related to children's hypothetical decisions to tell Self-No Cost, Self-Cost to Other or Other-Cost to Self lies. Children's inhibitory control and theory of mind were significant covariates for some of the ADCAT predictor variables and children's hypothetical truth and lying behaviors. Altogether, these findings indicate that the effectiveness of the ADCAT cost-benefit formula for predicting children's lying behavior is affected by developmental factors and the type of lie being analyzed.

To err is human but not deceptive

This study addresses a poorly understood but important question concerning the cognition of deception: How much more is there to lying than to responding incorrectly, the latter capturing how researchers have occasionally operationalized deception? A recent social-cognitive account of lying - Activation-Decision-Construction-Action Theory (ADCAT) - asserts a qualitative difference between the two - for instance, that deception involves Theory of Mind inferences and more proactive interference. To test these notions within-subjects, participants answered closed-ended and open-ended questions probing general truths honestly, deceptively, or with intentional errors. Response time and noncompliance with instructions were the dependent measures. Deceptive responding generally elicited the longest response times and the lowest instruction compliance, followed by intentional erring, supporting the theory. Although not the primary focus, response inhibition due to implausible deception was demonstrated for the first time.

The role of executive functions in the effects of lying on memory

Recent studies have demonstrated that lying can affect memory and that such memory effects are based on the cognitive load required in performing the lie. The present study aimed to verify whether the impact of two deceptive strategies (i.e., false denials and fabrication) depends on individuals' cognitive resources in terms of Executive Functions (i.e., EF: Shifting, Inhibition, and Updating). A sample of 147 participants watched a video of a robbery and then were instructed to either fabricate (i.e., fabrication condition), deny (i.e. false denial condition), or tell the truth (i.e., truth-telling condition) to some questions about the crime. Two days later, all participants had to provide an honest account on a final memory test where they indicated their memory for having discussed details (i.e., fabricated, denied, or told the truth) and their memory for the video. Finally, their EF resources were also assessed. Our findings demonstrated that individual differences in EFs played a role in how the event was recalled and on the effects of lying on memory. That is, memory for the event after having lied depended especially on individuals' Shifting resources. We also found that the two deceptive strategies differentially affected individuals' memory for the interview and for the event: Denying affected memory for the interview while fabricating affected memory for the event. Our findings can inform legal professionals on the possibility to assess individuals' EF as an indicator of witnesses' credibility.

Testing the Effects of a Preceding Self-Control Task on Decision-Making in Soccer Refereeing

The present study tested the assumption that the momentary level of self-control strength affects the accuracy rates in a sports-related judgment and decision-making task. A total of N = 27 participants rated the veracity of 28 video-taped statements of soccer players who were interviewed by a non-visible referee after a critical game-related situation. In half of the videos, the players were lying, and in the other half, they were telling the truth. Participants were tested twice: once with temporarily depleted self-control strength and once with temporarily available self-control strength (order counterbalanced; measurements separated by exactly 7 days). Self-control strength was experimentally manipulated with the Stroop task. In line with two-process models of information processing, we hypothesized that under ego depletion, information is processed in a rather heuristic manner, leading to lower accuracy rates. Contrary to our expectations, the level of temporarily available self-control strength did not have an effect on accuracy rates. Limitations and implications for future research endeavors are discussed.

The truth about snitches: an archival analysis of informant testimony

Informants are witnesses who often testify in exchange for an incentive (i.e. jailhouse informant, cooperating witness). Despite the widespread use of informants, little is known about the circumstances surrounding their use at trial. This study content-analyzed trials from 22 DNA exoneration cases involving 53 informants. Because these defendants were exonerated, the prosecution informant testimony is demonstrably false. Informant characteristics including motivation for testifying, criminal history, relationship with the defendant and testimony were coded. Most informants were prosecution jailhouse informants; however, there were also defence jailhouse informants and prosecution cooperating witnesses. Regardless of informant type, most denied receiving an incentive, had criminal histories, were friends/acquaintances of the defendant and had testimonial inconsistencies. In closing statements, attorneys relied on informant testimony by either emphasizing or questioning its reliability. The impact of informant testimony on jurors' decisions is discussed in terms of truth-default theory (TDT), the fundamental attribution error and prosecutorial vouching.

Truth and lies in your eyes: Pupil dilation of White participants in truthful and deceptive responses to White and Black partners

In the present study, we examined the pupillary response of White participants who were asked to tell the truth or lie to White or Black partners. Research on cues to deception has assumed that lying is more cognitively demanding that truth telling. In line with this assumption, previous studies have shown that lying is associated with greater pupil dilation, a behavioral cue that typically manifests itself under conditions of stress or cognitive effort. In accordance with these results, we predicted greater pupil dilation when lying than when telling the truth. Furthermore, pupil dilation was expected to be greater when responding to White than Black partners. Finally, we hypothesized that pupil dilation would be greater when lying to White than Black partners. Participants were instructed to answer a set of questions, half truthfully and half deceptively. They were led to believe that White vs. Black partners (one male and one female) would ask the questions via computer connection. Indeed, we used feminine and masculine synthetic voices. Pupil dilation was assessed with a remote eye-tracking system. Results provided support for the first two hypotheses. However, the predicted interaction between race of partners and truth status of message (lying vs. telling the truth) was nonsignificant. Our findings highlight the importance of considering race in the study of truthful and deceptive communications.

Body Language Influences on Facial Identification at Passport Control: An Exploration in Virtual Reality

Person identification at airports requires the matching of a passport photograph to its bearer. One aim of this process is to find identity impostors, who use valid identity documents of similar-looking people to avoid detection. In psychology, this process has been studied extensively with static pairs of face photographs that require identity match (same person shown) versus mismatch (two different people) decisions. However, this approach provides a limited proxy for studying how other factors, such as nonverbal behaviour, affect this task. The current study investigated the influence of body language on facial identity matching within a virtual reality airport environment, by manipulating activity levels of person avatars queueing at passport control. In a series of six experiments, detection of identity mismatches was unaffected when observers were not instructed to utilise body language. By contrast, under explicit instruction to look out for unusual body language, these cues enhanced detection of mismatches but also increased false classification of matches. This effect was driven by increased activity levels rather than body language that simply differed from the behaviour of the majority of passengers. The implications and limitations of these findings are discussed.

Applying Hierarchy of Expert Performance (HEP) to investigative interview evaluation: strengths, challenges and future directions

The purpose of this paper is to systematically examine the research literature on the decision of expert interviewers within the theoretical framework of the Hierarchy of Expert Performance (HEP). After providing an overview of the HEP framework, existing research in the investigative interviewing at each of the eight levels of the HEP framework is reviewed. The results identify areas of strength in reliability between experts' observations (Level 2) and of weakness in reliability between experts' conclusions (Level 6). Biases in investigative interview experts' decision making is also revealed at biasability between expert conclusions (Level 8). Moreover, no published data are available in reliability within experts at the level of observations (Level 1) or conclusions (Level 5), biasability within or between expert observations (Level 3 and 4) and biasability within expert conclusions (Level 7). The findings highlight areas where future research and practical endeavour are much needed for the investigative interview.

"Are You Telling the Truth?" - Testing Individuals' Ability to Differentiate Between Truth and Deceit in Soccer

In the present paper, we tested the ability of individuals to judge correctly whether athletes are lying or telling the truth. For this purpose, we first generated 28 videos as stimulus material: in half of the videos, soccer players were telling the truth, while in the other half, the same soccer players were lying. Next, we tested the validity of these video clips by asking N = 65 individuals in a laboratory experiment (Study 1a) and N = 52 individuals in an online experiment (Study 1b) to rate the level of veracity of each video clip. Results suggest that participants can distinguish between true and false statements, but only for some clips and not for others, indicating that some players were better at deceiving than others. In Study 2, participants again had to make veracity estimations, but we manipulated the level of information given, as participants (N = 145) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions (regular video clips, mute video clips, and only the audio stream of each statement). The results revealed that participants from the mute condition were less accurate in their veracity ratings. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Both High Cognitive Load and Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Over the Right Inferior Frontal Cortex Make Truth and Lie Responses More Similar

Deception scholars have argued that increasing the liar’s cognitive system artificially can produce deception cues. However, if too much load is imposed, the truth tellers’ performance can also be impaired. To address this issue, we designed a veracity task that incorporated a secondary task to increase cognitive load gradually. Also, because deception has been associated with activity in the inferior frontal cortex (IFC), we examined the influence of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) of the IFC on performance. During stimulation, participants truthfully or deceptively indicated whether each of a number of statements shown on screen was true or not. Higher load decreased recall but not general compliance or response times (RTs). Truthful trials yielded higher compliance rates and faster RTs than deceptive trials except for the highest load level. Anodal right stimulation decreased compliance in truthful trials when participants were not overloaded. Truth telling was more vulnerable to cognitive load and tDCS than lying.

Applying the verifiability approach to deception detection in alibi witness situations

The application of alibi witness scenarios to deception detection has been overlooked. Experiment 1 was a study of the verifiability approach in which truth-telling pairs completed a mission together, whereas in lying pairs one individual completed this mission alone and the other individual committed a mock theft. All pairs were instructed to convince the interviewer that they completed the mission together by writing individual statements on their own followed by a collective statement together as a pair. In the individual statements, truth-telling pairs provided more checkable details that demonstrated they completed the mission together than lying pairs, whereas lying pairs provided more uncheckable details than truth-telling pairs. The collective statements made truth-telling pairs provide significantly more checkable details that demonstrated they were together in comparison to the individual statements, whereas no effect was obtained for lying pairs. Receiver Operating Characteristic curves revealed high accuracy rates for discriminating between truths and lies using the verifiability approach across all statement types. Experiment 2 was a lie detection study whereby observers' abilities to discriminate between truths and lies using the verifiability approach were examined. This revealed that applying the verifiability approach to collective statements improved observers' ability to accurately detect deceit. We suggest that the verifiability approach could be used as a lie detection technique and that law enforcement policies should consider implementing collective interviewing.

Lie prevalence, lie characteristics and strategies of self-reported good liars

Meta-analytic findings indicate that the success of unmasking a deceptive interaction relies more on the performance of the liar than on that of the lie detector. Despite this finding, the lie characteristics and strategies of deception that enable good liars to evade detection are largely unknown. We conducted a survey (n = 194) to explore the association between laypeople’s self-reported ability to deceive on the one hand, and their lie prevalence, characteristics, and deception strategies in daily life on the other. Higher self-reported ratings of deception ability were positively correlated with self-reports of telling more lies per day, telling inconsequential lies, lying to colleagues and friends, and communicating lies via face-to-face interactions. We also observed that self-reported good liars highly relied on verbal strategies of deception and they most commonly reported to i) embed their lies into truthful information, ii) keep the statement clear and simple, and iii) provide a plausible account. This study provides a starting point for future research exploring the meta-cognitions and patterns of skilled liars who may be most likely to evade detection.

Being accurate about accuracy in verbal deception detection

PURPOSE

Verbal credibility assessments examine language differences to tell truthful from deceptive statements (e.g., of allegations of child sexual abuse). The dominant approach in psycholegal deception research to date (used in 81% of recent studies that report on accuracy) to estimate the accuracy of a method is to find the optimal statistical separation between lies and truths in a single dataset. However, this method lacks safeguards against accuracy overestimation.

METHOD & RESULTS

A simulation study and empirical data show that this procedure produces overoptimistic accuracy rates that, especially for small sample size studies typical of this field, yield misleading conclusions up to the point that a non-diagnostic tool can be shown to be a valid one. Cross-validation is an easy remedy to this problem.

CONCLUSIONS

We caution psycholegal researchers to be more accurate about accuracy and propose guidelines for calculating and reporting accuracy rates.

"Someone told me": Preemptive reputation protection in communication

Information sharing can be regarded as a form of cooperative behavior protected by the work of a reputation system. Yet, deception in communication is common. The research examined the possibility that speakers use epistemic markers to preempt being seen as uncooperative even though they in fact are. Epistemic markers convey the speakers' certainty and involvement in the acquisition of the information. When speakers present a lie as indirectly acquired or uncertain, they gain if the lie is believed and likely do not suffer if it is discovered. In our study, speakers of English and Italian (where epistemic markers were presented lexically) and of Estonian and Turkish (where they were presented grammatically through evidentials) had to imagine being a speaker in a conversation and choose a response to a question. The response options varied 1) the truth of the part of the response addressing the question at issue and 2) whether the epistemic marker indicated that the speaker had acquired the information directly or indirectly. Across languages, if participants chose to tell a lie, they were likely to present it with an indirect epistemic marker, thus providing evidence for preemptive action accompanying uncooperative behavior. For English and Italian participants, this preemptive action depended respectively on resource availability and relationship with the addressee, suggesting cultural variability in the circumstances that trigger it.

To freeze or not to freeze: A culture-sensitive motion capture approach to detecting deceit

We present a new signal for detecting deception: full body motion. Previous work on detecting deception from body movement has relied either on human judges or on specific gestures (such as fidgeting or gaze aversion) that are coded by humans. While this research has helped to build the foundation of the field, results are often characterized by inconsistent and contradictory findings, with small-stakes lies under lab conditions detected at rates little better than guessing. We examine whether a full body motion capture suit, which records the position, velocity, and orientation of 23 points in the subject's body, could yield a better signal of deception. Interviewees of South Asian (n = 60) or White British culture (n = 30) were required to either tell the truth or lie about two experienced tasks while being interviewed by somebody from their own (n = 60) or different culture (n = 30). We discovered that full body motion-the sum of joint displacements-was indicative of lying 74.4% of the time. Further analyses indicated that including individual limb data in our full body motion measurements can increase its discriminatory power to 82.2%. Furthermore, movement was guilt- and penitential-related, and occurred independently of anxiety, cognitive load, and cultural background. It appears that full body motion can be an objective nonverbal indicator of deceit, showing that lying does not cause people to freeze.

Selective attention, not cognitive load, elicited fewer eyeblinks in a concealed information test

The concealed information test (CIT), a memory detection test, compares physiological responses to crime-related and crime-unrelated items. This study elucidated processes involving spontaneous eyeblinks during the CIT by manipulating participants' intention to conceal. Thirty-four participants committed mock theft. In the CIT, wherein eyeblinks are measured simultaneously with autonomic responses, the secret group concealed the crime-related item, whereas the no-secret group did not. As a result, heart rate (HR) was modulated by the intention of concealment in autonomic measures, whereas the effect of concealment on the decrease of eyeblinks was not found to be significant. In addition, the latency of the first eyeblink was longer for the crime-related item in both groups. These results imply that CIT eyeblinks mainly involve the process of selective attention for the item, and the latency of the first eyeblink reflects a delay in attentional disengagement from the item. This study also suggested that there is still room for improvement in simultaneously measuring eyeblinks and autonomic responses in the CIT.

Police perceptions of the impact that ADHD has on conducting cognitive interviews with youth

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in youth witnesses, victims and suspects can significantly impact the investigative interviewing process. In this study, 102 Child Protection Investigation Unit (CPIU) detectives were asked to read four vignettes of adolescents being interviewed by police, two as witnesses and two as suspects, in which one witness and one suspect display ADHD-type behaviour. The detectives rated the degree to which the behaviour in each vignette would impact the interviewer's ability to use the 10 key components of the cognitive interview (CI). They perceived ADHD-type interviewee behaviour as significantly hampering the use of all 10 CI components. There is also a significant difference between the detectives' rated severity of each CI component; they rated Encourage Concentration, Mentally Recreate and Change Order as exerting the strongest impact on the interview process. Implications for police perceptions of training options, needs and preferences regarding interviewing youth with ADHD are discussed.

Deception Detection and Truth Detection Are Dependent on Different Cognitive and Emotional Traits: An Investigation of Emotional Intelligence, Theory of Mind, and Attention

Despite evidence that variation exists between individuals in high-stakes truth and deception detection accuracy rates, little work has investigated what differences in individuals' cognitive and emotional abilities contribute to this variation. Our study addressed this question by examining the role played by cognitive and affective theory of mind (ToM), emotional intelligence (EI), and various aspects of attention (alerting, orienting, executive control) in explaining variation in accuracy rates among 115 individuals (87 women; mean age = 27.04 years [ SD = 11.32]) who responded to video clips of truth-tellers and liars in real-world, high-stakes contexts. Faster attentional alerting supported truth detection, and better cognitive ToM and perception of emotion (an aspect of EI) supported deception detection. This evidence indicates that truth and deception detection are distinct constructs supported by different abilities. Future research may address whether interventions targeting these cognitive and emotional traits can also contribute to improving detection skill.

Identifying Applicant Faking in Job Interviews

Abstract. Applicants’ use of faking tactics could threaten the validity of employment interviews. We examined criterion-based content analysis (CBCA), an approach used in legal contexts, as a potential indicator of interviewee faking. We also examined the moderating role of storytelling in the faking-CBCA relationship. We conducted one experimental study, with 100 interviewees receiving instructions to respond honestly versus to exaggerate/invent responses, and one mock interview study, with self-reported faking from 111 interviewees. Responses were recorded, transcribed, and coded for CBCA and storytelling. Faking was associated with CBCA when interviewees freely engaged in faking tactics, an overall CBCA indicator was used, and interviewees’ responses contained story features. Additional analyses highlight that CBCA-based assessments of faking/honesty could reach up to 63.4% accuracy.

Automated verbal credibility assessment of intentions: The model statement technique and predictive modeling

Recently, verbal credibility assessment has been extended to the detection of deceptive intentions, the use of a model statement, and predictive modeling. The current investigation combines these 3 elements to detect deceptive intentions on a large scale. Participants read a model statement and wrote a truthful or deceptive statement about their planned weekend activities (Experiment 1). With the use of linguistic features for machine learning, more than 80% of the participants were classified correctly. Exploratory analyses suggested that liars included more person and location references than truth‐tellers. Experiment 2 examined whether these findings replicated on independent‐sample data. The classification accuracies remained well above chance level but dropped to 63%. Experiment 2 corroborated the finding that liars' statements are richer in location and person references than truth‐tellers' statements. Together, these findings suggest that liars may over‐prepare their statements. Predictive modeling shows promise as an automated veracity assessment approach but needs validation on independent data.

When Is a Child's Forensic Statement Deemed Credible? A Comparison of Physical and Sexual Abuse Cases

A large national sample of 4,775 reports of child physical and sexual abuse made in Israel in 2014 was analyzed in order to examine whether assessments of credibility would vary according to abuse type, physical or sexual, and whether child and event characteristics contributing to the probability that reports of abuse would be determined as credible would be similar or different in child physical abuse (CPA) and child sexual abuse (CSA) cases. Results revealed that CPA reports were less likely to be viewed as credible (41.9%) compared to CSA reports (56.7%). Multigroup path analysis, however, indicated equivalence in predicting factors. In a unified model for both types of abuse, salient predictors of a credible judgment were older age, lack of a cognitive delay, and the alleged abusive event being a onetime less severe act. Over and beyond the effects of these factors, abuse type significantly contributed to the prediction of credibility judgments.

Developing a framework of behaviours before suicides at railway locations

Better knowledge of behaviours of people at railway property could help with identifying those at risk of suicide. Literature has been reviewed from a range of disciplines on what is known about studying behaviour in this type of public location. Secondary analysis has been carried out on descriptions of behaviour from structured exercises with experts and other pre-existing sources. A framework has been produced with five main classes (display of emotion, appearance, posture/movements, activities and interactions) and associated sub-classes. Commentary has been provided on factors that influence identification of suspicious behaviours, how to distinguish these from normal behaviours and the circumstances that inhibit timely reactions to the behaviour amidst the complexity of the operational railway. Opportunities to develop and use the framework are discussed, including using this to prompt collection of additional behavioural data from wider resources, enhancing staff training and developing requirements for effective use of surveillance technologies. Practitioner Summary: Many railway suicides could be prevented with better understanding of behaviours before events. Pre-existing data sources have been analysed, producing a framework highlighting five aspects of behaviour. This can prompt the collection of better evidence on pre-suicidal behaviours, with future applications in developing surveillance technologies, training staff and public awareness.