Detecting Deception

Question 1

What is lying?

Answer 1

An active process that requires one person to accept a falsehood as truth.

Question 2

What did DePaulo et al find in their study where they asked people to keep a diary of how often they lied in a week?

Answer 2

1 in 4 social interactions: lied to more than 30% of the people they interacted with.

Question 3

What did Hancock find their study on where people lie the most?

Answer 3

14% of emails, 27% face to face, 37% of phone calls.

Question 4

How does the polygraph test work?

Answer 4

Records autonomic arousal and detects physiological states associated with lying

Question 5

What are the 3 things that the polygraph records?

Answer 5

Respiration (top line)
Galvanic skin response (middle)
Blood pressure (bottom)

Question 6

What types of lies do polygraphs detect?

Answer 6

One’s that are highly motivated and highly motivated to avoid consequence.

Question 7

What is the Chinese Rice technique?

Answer 7

Fill their mouth with dry rice and leave them. Then ask them to spit it out. If it’s dry, shows they’re nervous due to having a dry mouth.

Question 8

When did the modern polygraph originate?

Answer 8

1917

Question 9

Is the polygraph a piece of admissible evidence in Canada and the US?

Answer 9

Not anymore.

Question 10

What are some of the uses of the polygraph test?

Answer 10

As a means to resolve a case, police selection, determining if an offender is violating his terms of probation.

Question 11

What is the relevant/irrelevant polygraph test (older model)?

Answer 11

2 types of questions
1. Relevant questions concerning the crime in question (Did you rob the bank)
2. Irrelevant questions concerning info unrelated to the crime. ( have you ever taken anything that didn’t belong to you?)
Jacks up involuntary responses, no control questions. Compare responses between the two conditions.

Question 12

How is guilt determined using the relevant/irrelevant procedure?

Answer 12

A guilty person will have a stronger response to relevant questions.

Question 13

What is the control question test?

Answer 13

Most commonly used with 3 types of questions:

1) Irrelevant question referring to respondents identity
2) Relevant questions about crime
3) Control questions.

Question 14

What is the control question test designed to do?

Answer 14

Be emotionally arousing for all respondents and typically focuses on a person’s honesty and past history.

Question 15

What types of responses should innocent people show the largest reactivity to in the control question test?

Answer 15

Control questions.

Question 16

What types of responses would manipulators show on the control question test?

Answer 16

Similar reactivity on relevant and control (same with anxious people)

Question 17

What types of responses would criminals show on the control question test?

Answer 17

Relevant questions would show higher arousal than control.

Question 18

What is the point of having a control question?

Answer 18

Deals with prior behaviour and is designed to provoke anxiety.

Question 19

What is the point of having irrelevant questions?

Answer 19

To obtain a baseline.

Question 20

What is the guilty knowledge test?

Answer 20

Seeks to determine whether the suspect knows details about the crime only the culprit would know. Questions are asked in multiple-choice or list format.

Question 21

What types of physiological responses do individuals show on the guilty knowledge test?

Answer 21

On the answers that are correct to the crime in question- questions with specific and memorable meaning to the perpetrator. Innocent people wouldn’t have this physiological arousal.

Question 22

What was the case of Floyd Fay?

Answer 22

Arrested for murder, prosecutor offered him a deal: take a polygraph test. If he passed, charges would be dropped. If he failed, a second test would be given. If the results from the second test conflicted with the first, the case would go to trial. If both failed,d then he’d plead guilty to lesser charges. If he refused to plead guilty, he would be tried for the original charge and results from the polygraph would be admitted as evidence. Floyd Fay then trained innmates to cheat the test.

Question 23

What percentage of guilty suspects are correctly classified as guilty according to CQT studies?

Answer 23

84-92%.

Question 24

What percentage of innocent suspects are correctly classified as innocent according to CQT studies?

Answer 24

55-78%.

Question 25

How accurate is the GKT?

Answer 25

98% accuracy at detecting innocence, 42% accuracy for guilty.

Question 26

What did Honts, Raskin, and Kircher find when looking at physical countermeasures or mental countermeasures on a polygraph when being asked control questions?

Answer 26

Both were equally as effective, resulting in 50% of the guilty suspects beating the polygraph. (innocent people spike on control questions)

Question 27

What other techniques have been shown to help beat a polygraph?

Answer 27

Mentally dissociating during relevant questions, suppressing overall physiological activity with drugs.

Question 28

What did the case of R. V beland do in terms of the polygraph?

Answer 28

SCC ruled that the polygraph should not be allowed in court- must be able to defend it in court scientifically and theoretically.

Question 29

What is thermal imaging?

Answer 29

Another polygraph technique that measures the amount of facial warming which is linked to regional bloodflow

Question 30

How accurate is thermal imaging?

Answer 30

Can correctly classify 75% of guilty suspects and 92% of innocent suspects.

Question 31

What is a brain-based polygraph technique?

Answer 31

Measures event related potentials through placing electrodes on the scalp and noting changes in electrical patterns related to a presentation of a stimulus.

Question 32

What are the accuracy rates for brain-based techniques?

Answer 32

92% for guilty, and 87% for innocent.

Question 33

What was the case of Terry Harrington?

Answer 33

He was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life. Learned about ERP’s and asked for one to be conducted on him. In 2002 he was granted an appeal, released in 2003 after 3 witnesses recanted their testimony

Question 34

How accurate has deception detection been shown to be in individual studies?

Answer 34

45-70%.

Question 35

Why is the predictive validity for deception detection so low?

Answer 35

We tend to rely on “tells” that lack predictive validity as well as most people have a truth bias.

Question 36

Are experts better at lie detecting than others?

Answer 36

No, with a couple of exceptions.

Question 37

What are the incorrect beliefs people have about verbal deception?

Answer 37

Has more spontaneous corrections
Has more admissions of lack of memory
Incorporates more unnecessary details
Talk more slowly and pause more.

Question 38

What are some correct beliefs about verbal deception?

Answer 38

Has less logical structure
Incorporates fewer details
Includes fewer attributions of one’s mental state

Question 39

What are some incorrect beliefs about nonverbal deception?

Answer 39

Liars: avoid eye contact
shift their posture more
smile or laugh inappropriately

Question 40

What is a correct belief about nonverbal deception?

Answer 40

Lies are told with a higher pitched voice, increased eye blinks and pupil dilation, increased self-touching or fidgeting, increased muscle tension.