Week 9 Reading 1; Eliciting reliable information in investigative interviews

Question 1

Accusatory methods of interrogation. Describe what this is and where it’s used

Answer 1

Accusatory methods in the US, Canada and Asia.
 These presume the suspect is guilty and contain 3 elements
* 1. Control, by detaining the suspect in a small room and leaving them uncertain of what will happen
* 2. Confrontation, by informing the suspect of the incriminating evidence and warning them about the consequences of denial
* 3. Minimisation, by offering the suspect face-saving excuses or justifications of the crime, and implying more lenient consequences if he or she confesses
 Suggest these methods are essential to make reluctant suspects talk. Others argue that such methods lead to inaccurate information, including false confessions, and wrongful convictions

Question 2

Information gathering methods of interrogation; what are they and where are they used

Answer 2

Information gathering methods in NZ, Australia and Europe
 This works by building rapport explaining to suspects the allegation against them, and asking suspects to give their version of events
 There is a focus on listening and having suspects explain themselves without interruption
 At the end of the information-gathering investigators will present suspects with inconsistencies either within the story, or with evidence already gathered

Question 3

Summarise findings from studies that compare the 2 main interrogation styles

Answer 3

 Studies have explored the relative efficacy of these interview methods
o Ie. Confession rates in info gathering countries are between 49-61%. These are similar to the 50-55% in the US
o Ie. Meta-analysis by Meissner et al 2012 favoured information gathering approaches which elicited more relevant information than accusatorial approaches, increased the likelihood of true confessions and significantly decreased the likelihood of false conditions
o This meta-analysis also suggested that information gathering techniques are better for detecting deceit as;
 1. Accusation in itself can change a suspects behaviour (ie. Increase anxiety) which takes place in both liars and truth tellers making it harder to distinguish truthtellers and liars
 2. Information gathering leads suspects to communicate more, which increases the chances of verbal cues to deception, as words are the carriers of such cues.

Question 4

What is known about the methods and efficacy of lie detection

Answer 4

 Lie Detection;
o Guessing someone’s honesty in a study of 25k observers was about 54% when chance is 50%
o The accuracy of lie detection increases when the concequences of not being believed increase or when real-life police interview are reviewed but still do not exceed 65%
o It’s colloquially believed lie detection is easy, that lies have tells etc but there’s no evidence for this
o Police interview manuals place focus on looking at non-verbal behaviour versus speech content, arguing 70% of communicated info is displayed non-verbally. This claim has been taken out of context and is misleading

Question 5

What are the 2 non-verbal techniques used in lie detection

Answer 5

1.. Behavioural Analysis Interview (BAI
* Used in some US polic interviews prior to the interrogation phase
* Used to determine whether the interviewee is the suspect
* Relies on nonverbal cues and paralinguistics
* But deception research shows this to be unreliable
* Research supporting the BAI only knew the ground truth in 2 of 60 cases being studied which means these findings can’t be used to establish efficacy in distinguishing liars from truth-tellers
 2. Micro-expressions
* Deceptive emotion information is betrayed/leaked by microexpressions which are fleeting but complete facial expressions thought to reveal the felt emotion during emotional concealment and are supressed within 1/5th to 1/25th of a second
* There is little empirical research for this

Question 6

Two verbal techniques of lie detection

Answer 6

o There are two verbal lie detection tools used in practise internationally
 1. Criteria Based Content Analysis (CBCA)
* Used to determine credibility of child witnesses’ testimony in trials for sexual offences
* CBCA assessment are accepted as evidence in Western European countries
* In these CBCA experts read written transcripts of interviews with children and score for the presence of 19 criteria in these transctips
* Eg. Unstructured production, contextual embeddings, descriptions of interactions etc
* 72% accuracy with this measure in distinguishing truths from lies (but these were mostly adult studies in lab conditions)
 2. Scientific Content Analysis (SCAN)
* Developed by a formed polygraph examiner
* Used by FBI, CIA and military agencies in the US and social workers and lawyers etc
* In this, suspects write down in their own words their version of events
* SCAN experts then score the presence of an undefined number of criteria, including some criteria also assessed by CBCA experts
* There is no theoretic explanation as to why truth-tellers or liars would differ on SCAN criteria
* And research on the topic is scarce and uncompelling
* Only one study has shown above chance levels of detection with this theory
 Additionally, CBCA and SCAN criteria overlaps but predictions contradict eachother – eg. One paradigm says it makes claims more reliable and the other says it makes them more reliable

Question 7

o Emerging Techniques for detecting deceit

Answer 7

 Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE) approach
 Cognitive Lie Detection Approach
* Both approaches consider the mental states of truth-tellers and liars based on the principle that investigators can elicit differences between truth-tellers and liars through specific questioning
* Posits truthtellers are forthcoming, whilst liars avoid and escape questioning
* So, in the SUE technique qill ask questions about evidence without mentioning the evidence
o Liars are more likely to give evidence that contradicts the truth
* The cognitive lie detection technique consists of various instructions that are harder for liars to follow
* Has three concepts
* 1. Investigators will impose cognitive load in the interview (as lying in an interview is harder than telling the truth) – if liars are not telling the truth they will have less available cognitive resources to allocate to these additional requests. Eg. Please recall the events in reverse order
* 2. Encourages interviewees to say more by creating a positive atmosphere and making the interviewee feel appreciated and give a detailed description of how much detail is required
o This method will result in truth tellers adding more detail than liars
o This is because liars lack the imagination or creativity to add the same amount of detail as information or are fearful of disclosing more info they need to stay consistent on
* 3. Ask unexpected questions
o Typically truth-tellers and liars provide the same amount of information when answering expected questions but liars are less detailed on unexpected questions