The European Association of Psychology and Law (EAPL)
annually organises a conference to bring together researchers
and practitioners operating in a forensic context. Combining
different disciplines, such as psychology, criminology and law
leads to a multidisciplinary conference with presentations on
topics like detecting deception, false memories, presenting
forensic evidence in court, investigative interviewing, risk
assessment, offenders, victims and eyewitness identification (see
program). This year’s conference took place during the 24-27th
of June in St. Petersburg and I summarised a selection of talks
given during this conference.
Tuesday the 24th of June, 2014 Symposium 16.30-18.00 Allegation: True or false
Van Koppen: I don’t know why I did it: motives for filing false
allegations of rape. The first in a series of three talks (see
Horselenberg & de Zutter). Explained the basis of the false
allegations of rape Dutch & Belgian research project. Existing
data (Viclas) and models are insufficient. Researchers went
through rape cases between 1997-2011 and found more than 50
false allegations. Investigated the reasons why these people
made false allegations, and found in addition to the already
known factors (especially emotional and alibi factor were often
present; mental issues and vigilance were not) that people just
didn’t know why they made the false allegation, and that the
researchers couldn’t find out because the police hadn’t asked, so
it wasn’t in the project. So false allegations happen and cause
problems.
Horselenberg: Detecting false allegations: A trait, skill or a
gamble? How good are we at detecting false allegations of rape?
And does training help? To answer these questions, they tested 3
groups of people and measured if some people are better at
distinguishing true and false allegations of rape: lay, police
officers and vice officers. All groups scored around chance
level; experience did not increase performance. However, it did
increase confidence level. Tool is needed.
De Zutter: A valid tool to detect the true nature of allegations of
rape. False allegations will be similar to fabrication lies,
including: Behave as liars do, based on own sexual experiences
and based on beliefs. Beliefs are partly formed by information
presented by the media (more extreme than “regular rape” and
not very detailed). Ran a study to test a model they made based
on 27 true and false allegations of rape. Decision matrix: N =
75. 30/32 correct detection, false positive: 1/23 and false
negative: 1/9. Prediction matrix: 19/24 correct, 3/14 false
positive, 2/11 false negative, Error rate is 7/75 (9.9%). Although
the false positive and negative rates are worrying, the results are
better than current decision-making strategies based on instinct.
Discussion:- 1) How did you decide which criteria to use to
select the cases to build the model on? Answer: We needed to
know the ground truth (i.e., that the false allegations were really
false) to make sure we were building the model on real true and
false allegations, so our criteria were quite strict. 2) Do vice
officers get specific training to detect false allegations? Or how
do you decide that training doesn’t work? Answer: The police
officers just finished their training on how to detect false
allegations, so they did receive training. However, to make sure
that training didn’t help, one should test the group before and
after training, rather than the different categories used now.
3) Do you really believe some of the false allegation people did
not know why they did it? Answer: I couldn’t interview them in
person, so I had to rely on the existing police interviews. But
police officers really didn’t like it when people said they didn’t
know, and they experienced lengthy interviews about the false
allegation, and they stuck to: Spur of the moment, but I don’t
know why. 4) Is unknown due to the police interview really
unknown or undocumented? Answer: Can be both. 5) Because
police officers are trained to discriminate between true and fake
criminals, but those characteristics are different than true and
false rape allegations. Answer: We found chance level, but we
expected a truth or lie bias. Police officers were behaving
similarly to lay people, so they could not rely on their training.
Although training did make people more confident. So maybe
they need help from an objective tool to make these decisions.
The tool is not to replace the police, but to aid them, to help
them to improve their detection skills.
Korkman: The prevalence of founded and unfounded Child
Sexual Abuse (CSA) suspicions in a representative sample of
Finish adolescents. CSA police reports have been increasing in
the past decade (OPTULA crime statistics Finland, 2012). This
may be due to an increase in reporting rather than an increase in
cases. However, not all reported CSA cases are true, and
forensic investigators have a truth bias regarding CSA
allegations. They collected data on 12 & 15 year old Finish
adolescents, n = 11364, response rate 75%. CSA was defined as
sexual experiences with someone >5 years (so they include
consensual sex between a girl with an older boyfriend). 2.4%
reported CSA experience (3.6 for girls and 1.0% for boys).
13.3% of CSA has been reported to authorities (no difference in
age and gender). A question about false allegations (has any
adult at any time suspected you had been sexually abused
although this had not happened) led to 1.5% of false allegations.
14.5% of those false allegations were investigated by
authorities. In total, according to the children, of all cases
reported to authorities, about 41% were unfounded, and 59%
were founded. So false suspicions exist, and get reported to the
police. The media and the option to google CSA has played a
role in this increased awareness and the existence of false
suspicions à availability bias. On the bright side, the authorities
are more aware of CSA and more cases get reported and crime
rates go down (in US).
Questions: Why was the response rate so low (25%) if study
conducted in high school? Answer: The questionnaire was quite
long, they may got bored, thought it didn’t apply to them or
didn’t understand the question. You didn’t include CSA by
people who were between 0-5 years older (or younger) than the
alleged victim. Do you have any insights? Answer: There were
one or two cases, but we didn’t include them here.
Tadei: A Bayesian model to assess child sexual abuse reports
and identify the offender. He created a model to predict if a child
was sexually abused based on specific factors. The example he
presented was a model predicting if a child was sexually abused
given that he is anxious. In general, the CSA prevalence in
Europe in: 11-16.5% for girls and 3.8-8.4% for boys. In Finland,
8% for girls and 2-3% for boys. The variability in these
percentages is thought to depend on country (both prevalence
and reporting) and the age of the sample. However, there are
problems with CSA reports: 50% of questions are suggestive
and in 70% of the cases there was no physical evidence. So how
to use this information Using Bayesian statistics for CSA
reports: Prevalence of CSA = 5%. 60% of abused children have
anxiety. 30% of non-abused children have anxiety. The
likelihood of a child being abused knowing he/she is anxious, is:
60%*5%/28.5%+3%=9.5%. This model will become better
when more variables are included. The authors created software
that other researchers can use as well. They tested the model in a
pilot and large data file of 24482 Finnish 9 & 15-year old
children; it included 742 variables. The software/model
answered the question: Given a certain case with several known
variables, what is the likelihood that this girl was abused?
Wednesday the 25th of June 14.00-15.30 - Symposium Lie
detection: Research, theory and practice
Watkins: Sampling variations in deception detection
experiments: The consequences of misspecification. Main
message: Start using a general linear mixed effects model
instead of the standard ANOVAs.
Watkins: Lie hard with a vengeance: Getting specific about
cognitive manipulations. There is a recent trend towards a
cognitive approach to the detection of deception, increasing
detection rates with imposed cognitive load on the interviewee.
Do these lie imposed cognitive processes disrupt executive
control? This is based on the idea that we have a limited amount
of resources. And is it true the other way around, is deception
impaired by executive control processes? And if so, does this
occur specifically when lying? Study: Senders: N = 114,
participants tell a true statement, relax for 15 minutes to remove
any depletion caused by the first task. Between-subjects falseopinion design including 2 control conditions. Judges: N=762,
each judged 6 truths and 6 lies. The results showed that when
cognitively loaded, senders were more often correctly judged
(overall truths and lies) compared to participants in the low
cognitive load condition. This effect was particularly large for
the liars. Question: How does these results translate to judges
and lawyers, to the real world? And will training help? Answer:
It will not translate to high-stake lie situations, but the judges
were not just students but a more general MTurk population, so
it should be generalizable to other low-stake lies.
Warmelink: Evaluative priming task as a lie detection tool:
More data, better statistics. This study is based on the concept
of intention related positivity. They used a reaction time task,
using a prime followed by an adjective that should be classified.
People are faster on classifying positive words (but not
negative) when primed on their true intentions. This method can
be used as an intention lie detection task, because true intention
tellers will respond quicker to positive words, whilst there is no
difference between positive and negative words for false
intentions. N = 130 participants, 60 truth tellers and 64 liars;
reaction time experiment on true and false intentions including 3
time groups. Ran 2 types of analyses: Both ANOVA and
General Linear Mixed Effects Model. The ANOVA should a
three-way effect of valence, veracity and time: In the medium
(1000 millisecond) group, truth tellers responded quicker to
positive words than the liars. However, this effect was not found
in the small and large time group. Similar results were found
using a general linear mixed effects model in R. They created a
model using several predictors/factors to predict reaction time.
The model shows that although most people are faster on
positive words, but some people are faster on negative words,
and who will perform in which way cannot be predicted by the
model. So in conclusion, people respond differently to adjective
valence and the results that truthful people respond quicker to
positive words than negative words were replicated, but only in
the 1000ms condition.
Question: It seems like you did the second model to try to
explain why the effect wasn’t found in the slow and quick time
condition. What did you find? Answer: Nothing. I suspect that
the effect might be driven by a particular type of people that
don’t show the quicker respond to positive words. And that
those people were accidentally grouped in the same time
condition. Or maybe my participants had difficulty
understanding the prime words. Or 1 second is “the magic spot”.
It gives them time to process information and respond.
15.45-17.15 Wagenaar Symposium – Lie detection &
Memory
Brackmann: The impact of testing on the development of false
memories. When witnessing a crime, often you will immediately
talk about this event with others, including the police. What
effect does this recall have on memory later on? And what effect
does post-event misinformation have on the development of
false memories? In the current literature, there are 2 opposing
findings. Pansky et al found that testing leads to less
misinformation. However, Chan et al found that people who
were tested had more false memories. Her study, N=182
(children and adults). 2 day study, day 1: Participants witnessed
a theft and were tested or not, and verbatim or gist. On day 2
there was an eyewitness account with or without
misinformation. Subsequently, participants did a memory test.
The results showed that children were more susceptible than
adults. Testing helps to preserve eye-witness memory. However,
findings did not support the work of Pansky et al or Chan et al.
Shaw: False memories, real consequences? What is the
implication of implanting false memories of crime on real life?
If past behavior is the best predictor for future behavior, what
will be the implications of thinking you did something bad,
although you didn’t (due to the implantation of a false memory).
Methods: Familial informant false narrative procedure;
implanting a memory about a participant’s own life, which
involves contacting their parents for information and making
sure that the target events hadn’t really occurred. Implanted
memories in experimental condition were: Theft, assault and
assault with a weapon. In the control condition: Animal attack,
losing a large sum of money and injury. Cover story: Emotional
memories, which is why their parents were contacted.
Participants had experiences 1 target event (truth; asked parents)
and not experienced another (false memory). During the first
interview, false information was fed to the participant to
enhance the false memory (including a close your eyes and
imagine what happened tactics), and the experimenter pretended
that their parents told them these details. 70% formed false
memories of criminal events, and 77% for non-criminal events.
Importantly, the false memories looked much like real
memories. For example, complex multisensory memory realism
occurred, including mentions of smell and observers could not
distinguish true from false memories. If these false memories
seemed so real, will that negatively affect future behavior? To
measure this, self-report questionnaires about unethical and
criminal behavior were administered before and after the false
memory manipulation. Changes were found in the self-appraisal
questionnaire & the pro-social tendencies measure (less likely to
help a stranger), but not in the criminal thinking scale. In an
Implicit Association Test pairing crime & me found that people
were faster at combining me & crime when a criminal false
memory was implanted compared to people who had a noncriminal false memory. So we can generate false memories of
both emotional and criminal crimes and this affects their
implicit associations and self-reports.
Question: Why would future behavior be changed by memory
rather than by being an anti-social person; Personality is quite
stable and might be the main cause that past behavior is the best
predictor of future behavior, rather than having a (false) memory
of bad behavior. Good question, I don’t know.
Li: Remembering what I didn’t do: An experimental
investigation of the impact of lying on memory for actions We
assume that lying impacts on memory, partly because you miss
out on an opportunity to rehearse the truth, and lying is a form
of self-generated misinformation. So does lying impair the
memory for the truth? And do liars incorporate the lies in their
memory? Method: Perform activities including handling several
items, followed by getting instruction for the retrieval, 4
conditions: Truth, lie, opposite and no-rehearsal (control
condition). A week later participants came back for an item
recognition task: 48 out of 60 items were items they came across
during the retrieval practice phase. Of the not-used items, 6/12
items were old and 6/12 were new. If people lied about an item,
they had worse recognition memory for the action statement.
Saying the opposite led to a marginally significant decrease in
memory compared to the truth as well. Also, people were more
likely to falsely remember items they had used for their lies than
other items they did not include in their lies. So lying impairs
the memory for the truth and it creates false memories.
Hagsand: Stumbling down memory lane: When to interview
alcohol intoxicated eyewitnesses – immediate or delayed
interview. Alcohol causes problems: 50-70% of all violent
crimes in Sweden are alcohol related, and alcohol consumption
is increasing. However, little is known about alcohol-intoxicated
eyewitnesses. Alcohol interferes with the formation of long-term
memories, which can make it difficult to remember things the
next morning (blackout vs. grayout; no or little information is
encoded into long-term memory). Participants consumed the
equivalent of 3-4 glasses of wine in 15 minutes (vodka with
juice). RQ: Should we question intoxicated witnesses
immediately or when sober? If no alcohol is involved,
immediate recall is better than delayed. Method: 2 (alcohol or
no alcohol) x 2 (immediate and delayed or only delayed
interview) between subjects design. No main effect of alcohol
on amount of information (both sober and intoxicated witnesses
revealed similar amounts of information). Alcohol also did not
affect new details (both accuracy and amount of info) given in
the second interview compared to the first. However, time was
important; the immediate recall session led to more information
than the recall session. In conclusion, immediate interview was
better than delayed, both for sober and intoxicated witnesses and
alcohol did not really impair eyewitness memory. Question:
How can you distinguish between the effect of 2 vs 1 recall
moment and the immediate vs. delayed recall? Because you only
had 2 conditions: immediate and delayed or only delayed recall.
Answer: So there were recall condition: 1 recall which included
only delayed recall, and a 2 recall session which included both
an immediate and a delayed recall. To answer the ‘amount of
recall sessions’ hypothesis, we compared the 1 recall session
with the 2 recall session. To answer the ‘immediate vs. delayed
recall session’ hypothesis, we compared the delayed recall from
the 1 recall session with the immediate recall from the 2 recall
sessions. This way we did not need a condition in which
participants only did the immediate recall.
Szpitalak: Social contagion and the misinformation effect: A
comparison. The general question in the misinformation
research area is that if people are provided with false
information after an event, does that influence their memory on
the final test? (this is traditionally tested by watching a video
that includes a green car, followed by misinformation about a
red car). And, how is this affected by the way misinformation is
presented? Often, in misinformation research, the information is
delivered via a written narrative. In the current study it was
tested what the effect was of presenting misinformation through
social interaction, rather than in writing. How close is this to the
concept of social contagion? N = 108, 3 conditions (computer
written up front, handwritten by other participant during the
study and through social interaction). The results revealed that it
did not matter which of 3 conditions people participated in on
the amount of misremembered items, so it does not matter how
misinformation is delivered. Although it is interesting to know
that it does not matter how misinformation is presented to still
have an effect, this study was not able to shed a light on the role
of social contagion in the misinformation effect.
Thursday the 26th of June Symposium 10.00-11.30 Interviewing tactics
Bull: The effects of different ways within interviews of revealing
information to suspects. Overview talk on investigative
interviewing: The early days of investigative interviewing
started in the eighties, when the police became interested in
using psychology. The first workshops were organized, and
luckily the police listened to us, partly thanks to talks given by
Shepherd, who was a former marine and someone the police
admired. The audience was expecting him to “talk tough”, but
instead he advocated the use of rapport building rather than the
use of threat and violence, which helped warming the police up
to the idea of investigative interviewing. Important research in
the interviewing area: Holmberg et al, 2002 describing the
importance of letting the suspect talk. The need to new
strategies was shown by Baldwin (1993), who analyzed 600
police interviews (audio or video). His conclusions were that
interviewers did not challenge statements, and interviewers
often were badly prepared. Similarly, Moston, Stephenson and
Williamson (1992) realized that in the majority of the
interviews, interviewers did not try to obtain the account of what
happened. Instead, they accused the suspect, and any evidence
the police had was often presented early during the interview.
This type of research on interviewing techniques was difficult
back then, because accessing police interviews was very rare
and normally restricted to the government, rather than
researchers. The field then became interested in the elicitation of
false confessions, and how they are induced by accusatory
interviewing strategies. Soukara (2005; Soukara & Bull, 2010)
managed to access 40 interviews and analyzed those interviews
(divided in bits of 5 minutes). She showed which interview
tactics (e.g., information disclosure) were leading up to a shift
from denial towards confession.
Ewens: Drop the small talk when establishing baseline behavior
in interviews. Police officers are advised to examine a suspect’s
natural and truthful behavior at the beginning of an interview
through small-talk, especially focusing on expressiveness, worduse and tone of voice (Inbau, Reid, Buckley & Jayne, 2013).
This behavior is used as a baseline, and behavior during later
parts of the interview that differ from this baseline behavior are
seen as “suspicious”. However, small-talk is low-stakes, while
the actual interview, especially when met with suspicion by the
interviewer, is a high-stakes situation that is likely to elicit
different behavior regardless of guilt, which makes this a bad
comparison. Research has showed that context influences how
people behave, such as discussing embarrassing vs. neutral
topics, and discussing a topic that interests you vs. a topic you
don’t care about, and being challenged vs. not being challenged
during the interaction. Seen as behavior is topic related and can
change over time, looking at differences between baseline
behavior during low-stakes small-talk and the suspect’s
response to critical interview parts may not be a good way to
decide if someone was lying. In the present study, N=243,
interviewees’ videoed behavior was rated (7-point Likert Scale)
on emotions, cognitive load and behavioral control. A 2 x
Veracity (truth vs. lie) 3 Period (baseline vs. Target period 1 at
the middle of the interview vs. Target period 2 at the end of
interview) between subjects design was used. Participants told a
truth or lie about their occupation and had a few days to prepare
their interview. Importantly, the study suffered from problems
with low inter-rated reliability (emotion was entirely removed,
and the other 2 categories were .6-.7). The results showed that
all participants’ behavior as rated by the two independent raters,
differed between the baseline and target periods regardless of
veracity (i.e., also for the truth tellers). Therefore the current use
of baseline behavior does not work. And if one really wants to
use baseline behavior, more high-stake baseline (truthful)
behavior should be established.
Question: How did you rate the videos? Answer: It was rated
rather than coded, so the outcome is subjective. But we did use
2 raters so we could measure the inter-rater reliability. This
analysis showed that we had to remove the emotional
(nervousness) category due to low inter-rater reliability, so the
current conclusions are drawn based on cognitive load and
behavioral control.
Jo: Effectiveness of interrogation tactics and rapport building in
obtaining changes in the suspect’s account from denial to
admission. This study investigates how often informationgathering (open questions, rapport building) and accusatory
interview (minimization, maximalization) strategies are used in
Korea at the moment, and which tactics are effective in eliciting
a confession. Nowadays, a confession is (still) very important
evidence in Korea, but the pressure used to obtain a confession
can be lead to false confessions. In Korea, a written statement
from the suspect is always submitted to the court (written by the
prosecutor and in cooperation wit the police and this can be used
as evidence in court). There is also an electronic recording
system that can be used (if there are any discrepancies) to rectify
the written statement of the suspect. The current study that is
investigating what type of interviewing tactics are used during
Korean police interviews and if those tactics differed between
interviews in which the suspect kept denying vs. interviews in
which the suspect switched from denial to confession, is based
on a study by Soukara, Bull, Vrij, Turner and Cherryman
(2009). They found a total of 17 tactics used in police interviews
by interviewers trained in the PEACE model (investigative
interviewing). The current study involved transcribing and
coding (2 coders; inter-rater reliability of .67 for interview
tactics and .95 for suspect response types) 48 videos, 8
homicides and 37 sexual assault cases. The most common tactic
was leading questions (31.4%), followed by interruptions
(3.8%) and challenging (3.1%; notice the large difference
between leading questions and any other type of interview
tactic). As a comparison, open questions were only asked 1% of
the time. Worrying, even more leading questions were used in
the group of suspects that changed from denial to confessing.
Rapport building was only used in 41% of the interviews, and
did not differ between the change and continuous denial group.
In conclusion, 9/10 cases were successful in obtaining a
confession, mostly through accusatory techniques, which is
worrying with regard to false confessions.
Richardson: Interview tactics: Using mimicry to encourage
cooperation. Little research has been conducted on simple
language use in interviews; rather, the focus so far mainly has
been on interview tactics. Can changes in simple language use
influence cooperation? There is a positive relationship between
mimicry and cooperation, and this is shown through a similar
the use of function words (9 categories: adverbs, articles,
auxiliary verbs, conjunctions, indefinite pronouns, negations,
personal pronouns, prepositions and quantifiers). Function
words are about how something is said, rather than what is said,
which means this type of analysis can be used across situations.
In a first study using transcriptions of real police-interviews, a
correlation was found between confession and language style
matching (i.e., verbal mimicry; measured using Pennebaker’s
Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count); interviews ending in
confessions progressed to a state where the suspect gradually
mimicked the language of the interrogator, whilst the opposite
was found for interviews that did not lead up to a confession
(this finding was ‘type of function word’ specific, so did not
occur for all 9 categories of function words). In the next study
the authors investigated the link between cooperation and
confession in a more experimental setting. Instead of looking at
the natural occurrence of verbal mimicry, can we train people to
mimic in order to increase cooperation? And can the interviewee
be primed to use certain categories of function words? Results:
Yes, changing the interviewer’s language can be used as a
prime, as it increases the desired type of word use by the
interviewee. But does this change in function word use also
increase cooperation? To answer this study, a second
experimental study (third in total) was conducted, n = 64, in
which a confederate was trained to match the type of function
word used by the interviewee and this was implemented during
a negotiation task. Results: When the interviewer was
mimicking the interviewee, he gained more points on the
negotiation task than when he was not mimicking the
interviewee. So when the interviewer deliberately mimics, he
benefits more from the interview than the interviewee does, and
this effect is covert (i.e., not clear to the interviewee).
Symposium 11.45-13.15 – Lies in the investigative process
Akehurst: Creating a false identity: Investigating cognitive load
for, and perceived credibility of, native and non-native speakers.
The author used to investigate detecting deception in children,
but is now looking at another vulnerable group; non-native
language speakers, which is especially useful in border control
situations, where people speaking lots of different languages
continuously meet. How does second language use affect
deception? Little is done on second language research so far.
Lying behavior is likely to be affected by second language use
because both lying and second language use is cognitively
demanding. This increase in cognitive load may lead to
increased detection rates. However, there is also the risk of
false-positives, as non-native speakers might be thought to be
lying just because of the behavioral changes caused by speaking
in their second language. In a first study by Cheng & Broadhurst
(2005), this hypothesis was not supported as they did not find a
difference in detection rates between first and second language
speakers. But the author argues that this may be due to
methodological issues, seen as they used a false opinion
paradigm, which is troublesome because you don’t know the
ground truth. Also, participants in their study were allowed to
switch between both languages (code switching), and
participants were put in different conditions based on selfreported language proficiency. The current study was designed
to overcome the methodological flaws of the Cheng &
Broadhurst (2005) study and test the effect of second language
use (French native and English as second language) on
deception detection rates. 2 (veracity) x 2 (language) design in
which truth tellers studied their own passport, while liars studied
a false identity card and were then interviewed in an
accusatory/confronting manner about “themselves”. Ground
truth could be checked because all real and fake passports were
present at the study, so the answers participants gave could be
checked against the real and fake identity cards. The interviewer
then judged deception. Results: The authors found a strong truth
bias, especially for native speakers. Regarding truths, they found
a 91% correct detection rates for native speakers, and 88% for
non-native speakers. Regarding lies, only a 27% correct
detection rate was found for native speakers (truth bias; the
interviewer categorized more stories as true than false, leading
to a high detection rates for truths and a low detection rates for
lies) and a 60% correct detection rate for non-native speakers.
So in general, the native speakers were rated as more credible
than non-native speakers. Also, non-native speakers were rated
as more nervous when lying compared to when telling the truth,
although there was no nervousness effect caused by lying in
native speakers. Last, native speakers were monitoring their own
behavior more than non-native speakers. In a follow-up study
120 people will look at these videos (rather than using this one
interviewer who was categorizing truths and lies in the current
study), listen to the audio or read the transcripts to see if the
results can be generalized and to measure if accents matter when
judging deception. Possible explanations for differences
between native and non-native speakers: Limited
communication, blunted emotion and increased cognitive load.
Solodukhin: Lying in a non-native language: Effects on
cognitive load and emotions. What effect does language
proficiency level has on detecting deception and the suspicion
they are met with during interviews? A 2 (veracity) x 4
(language proficiency; native, beginner, intermediate and
advanced level) design was used, with 16 participants per group.
Participants watched a video about a normal office situation, or
a suspicious office situation (including maps, blueprints and
bomb-making manuals) and were subsequently interviewed
about this office, followed by a set of questionnaires measuring
emotional and cognitive cues. Results showed there was no
effect of veracity and proficiency on nervousness (i.e., emotion),
thinking hard (cognitive load) and monitoring. However, for the
truth tellers, native speakers thought they were less likely to be
believed by the interviewer compared to non-native speakers.
And regardless of proficiency, people preferred to be
interviewed in their native language. Question: It didn’t seem
like a difficult interview, there were a lot of closed questions.
The easy questions might have influenced your lack of results.
Answer: It might be, but I interviewed them, and non-native
speakers did have difficulty answering the questions and did not
know the right words for some items, so I personally don’t think
the interview was too easy.
Strofer: Deceiving - More than lying. Mere the intention to
deceive increases cognitive load. Lying can be more cognitively
demanding than truth telling, due to suppressing the truth
(Spence et al 2001; Walczyk et al 2004), saying something not
true (Spence et al 2001; Walczyk et al 2004) and selfmonitoring / impression management (Kassin 2005). Most
cognitive load research in this area is done on actual lying,
although in some situations the intention of lying is enough to
create a false belief rather than an actual lie. Therefore the
author experimentally investigated the effect of cognitive load
on the intention to lie. Participants had to answer questions
truthfully, deceitful or with the intention to lie in an emotional
or cognitive load setting. The dependent variable was measured
through skin conductance. Skin conductance was higher for lies
than truths and intentions. In the cognitive load setting, the
highest skin conductance occurred during lying, followed by
intentions to lie and then the truth. So having an intention to lie
also increases skin conductance regarding cognitive load, but
not emotional responses.
Van Der Zee: Restoring the balance: How feelings of injustice
affect lie tendency. Deception research is currently focused on
improving detection rates, rather than looking at the deterrents
of deception. However, a better understanding of the underlying
factors that cause people to lie creates the possibility to decrease
the amount of lies people tell in the first place. In an online
study, it was found that people’s perception of the fairness of a
request was the most consistent and significant determinant of
the amount of personal information they would disclose
(Malheiros, Preibusch, & Sasse, 2013). If people are more likely
to be truthful when they feel the situation is fair, does that mean
they will be more deceitful when a situation is unfair? The
current study investigates this question by analyzing the effect
of feelings of unfairness on lie tendency. The cover story of this
first online experiment was a language proficiency study
consisting of a grammar and semantics test. First, participants
were told that they would receive a monetary bonus if they
would answer all grammar questions correctly. Secondly,
participants were told they would receive a monetary bonus for
each correctly provided definition during the semantics test. At
the end of the grammar task, participants received true (n = 75)
or false feedback (n = 81), causing participants in the false
feedback condition to believe that they would not receive the
bonus despite having answered all questions correctly. It was
then measured how many people cheated during the semantics
test in order to increase their monetary bonus. Results revealed
that the manipulation worked; participants in the unfair situation
felt less happy and more anxious and frustrated after the
feedback manipulation, whilst participants in the control
condition did not. Consequently, participants who received false
feedback cheated more often than people who did not receive
such feedback, implying that being treated unfairly affects both
emotions and lie tendency. However, in the first study, we did
not distinguish between the effect of being rejected in general
and effect of the perceived fairness of this rejection. To test this
question in a practically relevant context, a second study was
conducted in which participants were asked to fill in a travel
insurance claim form based on a scenario and the main
insurance guidelines. Participants received random feedback; or
their claim was accepted, or it was fairly rejected (based on a
violation of the main insurance guidelines), or it was unfairly
rejected (the wide interpretation of a vague concept). The results
revealed that the negative emotional response was caused by
being rejected in general. And although rejection led to an
increase in lying, this effect was especially large when rejected
unfairly. So although the fairness of a rejection does not impact
people’s feelings, it does affect their lie tendency. This
knowledge has a high practical relevance, for example in the
context of rejected insurance claims. A lack of transparency
when rejecting applications may create feelings of unfairness in
clients, increasing the chances that those clients will lie in order
to “restore the balance”.
Vihkman: Cognitive and emotional characteristics of liars. The
author promoted the research center in Russia he works at where
they study different aspects of psychology and law. For
example, they studied the personality of liars measuring SJT
(based on information manipulation theory by McCormack),
Machiavellianism and other personality measures. N=210 (3
conditions based on participants’ scores at personality scales:
Liars, norm(al) group and honest respondents). The results
showed that Liars scored higher in psychotism, and lower in
moral control, volition and emotional stability. Liars differed
from the norm group in personality traits such as self-control
and affect. Honest participants differed from the norm group as
well, mainly in temperament. We then wondered, how are the
tendency to lie and our thinking system connected? N=70,
police investigators and students had to decide if 5 (real)
criminals were convicted for a violent murder or a non-violent
fraud crime. Information about criminals was presented on a
website, incl. info and picture and participants could navigate
their own way through the website. Results: Success of
identification was not affected by professional work experience
(no difference between students and police officers). However,
the time participants spend on making a decision did make a
difference, and longer, deliberate decisions were better than
quick decisions. That made the authors wonder, what is the link
between suggestibility to cognitive biases and detecting
deception? To this end, they are developing a psychometric test
to measure the susceptibility to cognitive biases.
Question: Was this an experimental design, i.e., did you assess
participants to the true, norm and lie condition, or was this
division based on personality? Answer: Based on personality.
We used 2 tests, a psycholinguistic case test and a
Machiavellianism scale. Whenever people scored high on both,
we categorized them as liars, when they scored low they were
categorized as honest and middle group served as the norm?
Criticism: If you categorize people based on their personality as
liars, normal and honest people, then how much does it mean
that you find personality differences between liars and truth
tellers?
Symposium 13.30-15.00 - Lie detection tools
Tekin: Strategic Interviewing to elicit new information: Making
liars more forthcoming. Can we use a strategic evidence
disclosure (SUE technique) to improve police interviews? (i.e.,
get more information/make suspects more forthcoming). Study:
N=120, 3 (interview technique: SUE, early disclosure and
control interview) x 2 (veracity: Truth and lie) design. Each
interview started with a free recall section, followed by
questioning. Dependent variables were the amount of details
disclosed and the suspect’s perception of the evidence. Suspects
did a pre-interview task and were subsequently interviewed
about this experience. The interviewer had some information
(especially what happened before and after the crime), but not
all crime related information, and when interviewers revealed
this evidence was one of two independent variables. Results: A
main effect for veracity was found; truth tellers revealed more
new information than liars. Interview technique did not affect
information disclosure. However, interview technique did affect
the opinions of the suspect. Also, the more information liars
thought the interviewer had about the crime, the more details
they gave. This did not affect truth tellers. So the perception
suspects had regarding how much evidence and information the
interviewer knew about the crime was more important for the
amount of information disclosed by the suspect, rather than
when this information was disclosed (i.e., interview technique).
In a next study however, it was shown that the SUE technique
(withholding the knowledge the interviewer has about the
evidence until later during the interview) did have a positive
effect on information disclosure, so investigating when evidence
should be presented during interviews seems an interesting
avenue.
Hillman: How much does it hurt? Detecting deceptive motion
using point light displays. Can we detect deceptive motion? In
medical insurance cases, the impact an injury has on someone’s
life will depict how much money they will get. Some people
exaggerate or lie during these medical assessments, leading to
the cost of insurance fraud of 2.1 billion a year. Can behavior
show if people are lying? However, often behavior is measured
per isolated body part rather than looking at the entire body.
Therefore, in this study the author used point-light display with
9 cameras to measure the full-body behavior of people with
“genuine” (the “injury” was constructed by attaching a Lego
wait to the leg) and fake injuries. In this study, light-point
videos were created existing of 10 women who, entirely faked
an injured limp, exaggerated an injured leg or had an actual
impaired limb (existing of a healthy leg with a Lego weight
attached to it to create an impairment). Observers n=85, rated
each video clip for pain and strangeness, not realizing that some
of the videos were by the same person due to the light-points.
Exaggerated limbs were rated are more painful than fake limbs,
and both exaggerated and faked limbs were rated as more
painful than the genuine limbs. Importantly, exaggerated limbs
were rated are stranger than fake limbs, and both exaggerated
and faked limbs were rated as stranger than the genuine limbs.
In addition, taking a biomedical perspective, the authors showed
evidence that when faking a leg injury, liars tried to control the
opposite side of their injury (mainly arms). These results
indicate that we can use full-body analysis of human behavior as
an indication of deceit in faked injuries situations.
Nahari: Inter-personal reality monitoring: Does judgment
framework matter? Does the purpose of the judgment affect the
criteria assessments? N=120. Participants were trained in using
Reality Monitoring (RM). Then the judgment context was
manipulated; relevant judgment context (the criteria predict
veracity), non-relevant judgment context (criteria predict literary
attractiveness) and no judgment context (criteria test textual
features). Each participant rated 6 life stories (3 genuine and 3
false). In all 3 conditions, participants perceived the truthful
stories as having more details than false stories. Importantly,
accuracy rates for both truths and lies were higher when the
context was relevant, compared to not relevant, so context
matters.
Keynote 15.30-16.30
Aldert Vrij: Lie detection in intelligence interviews
1. Undercover interviewing: Big difference in intention to lie vs.
lying about past events, and in intelligence interviews the
intention to lie is mainly important. First topic is undercover
interviewing. This happens if need to be decided if someone is
dangerous or not. A suspect will be followed for several days to
gather intelligence, and undercover interviews (that are
supposed to not blow the interviewer’s cover) will occur. Those
interviews need to be very brief, but lie detection is normally
easier if a suspect talks for a longer period of time. However,
spatial questions, that are useful to detect deceit, can still be
asked. Beneficial, these short undercover interviews are ideal to
measure cooperation and if the suspect is being forthcoming.
We know that liars prefer preparing (stereotypical) alibis, and
they prefer not to be linked to incriminating evidence, which can
decrease their cooperation and make them less forthcoming. In
Study 1 (Vrij, Mann, Jundi et al., 2012), n=86 (half were
genuine tourists and half were instructed terrorists). Terrorist
participants had to prepare a story on how they would visit the
Isle of Wight. A casual, undercover student interviewer
(pretended to do a tourist survey for the university) asked each
participant some questions: What are you going to do? (events
vs. activities) At what time will you return? (time) Can you
show the places you are going to visit on the map? (spatial) Do
you mind if I get a quick snap? (measures cooperation). Results
showed that the liars reported more events, but less activities
and time mentioned. Liars also made more mistakes at
identifying on a map where they were going, and had more
hedges. Truth tellers were more cooperative and allowed a
picture to be taken. In a second study, 53 participants were send
to take some photographs at a square with a cover story of
watching the 2012 sport event on large screens at that square.
Before the participant left the square, the mime artist asked if
they took a picture of him, and if he could check. There was no
difference in the amount of people that took a picture of the
mime player between truth tellers and liars. However, 60% of
the truth tellers allowed to check the photo, while only 20% of
the liars were okay with this request. So again, truth tellers were
more forthcoming and cooperative than liars. In conclusion,
undercover interviewing can be used to measure if people are
forthcoming or not. Specifically, will they later in a follow-up
interview mention the undercover interview or not? If not, it is
more likely that they are lying. This claim was studied and
confirmed in a collective undercover interview experiment
about a visit to the park where participants were undercover
interviewed, followed by a “more traditional interview”. They
found that the number of times that participants mentioned the
undercover interview in a first yes/no question was dependent
on being a truth tellers=, 0.44 or a liar 0.09. During the rest of
the interview a similar pattern was found, truth tellers
acknowledged the undercover interview 2.22 times vs. liars who
only mentioned the interviewer 1.63 times. In conclusion,
undercover interview elicit diagnostic cues to deceit for several
reasons, including that liars are less cooperative and
forthcoming than truth tellers.
2. Collective interviewing: Suspects often commit crimes in
groups, yet deception research is often focused on the
individual. This is of especial use in practical applications at the
street (e.g., border control, groups of youth/people in the street
and interviews for obtaining citizenship through marriage). An
additional benefit of collective interviews is that you have an
extra set of information; how the interviewees communicate
with each other. We know that recalling shared experiences lead
to many interactions (Rajaram, 2011), but liars try to keep their
story simple, so there is little to add and little need for
interruptions and corrections. So we expect liars to interact less
with each other than truth tellers. In a study, n = 43 pairs of
friends, truth tellers had lunch together and liars had to steal
money and pretend they had lunch instead. Results showed that
truth tellers interrupted each other more (large effect), corrected
more, added more information (large effect) and gaze more at
each other, but less at the interviewer than liars. These effects
can be use strategically by the interview by encouraging turntaking; decide who starts talking and ask the other person to
continue after 20 seconds. This was tested experimentally, n =
46 pairs of real couples (dating at least 1 year an cohabiting) and
fake couples (friends pretending to be a couple and cohabiting).
Pairs were send out for coffee to prepare the interview and we
subsequently interviewed together. Dependent variables were:
Waiting after response latency, waiting to start taking over;
Repeating what the other had already said, Continuing with
what the other was saying. Liars paused more per swap,
repeated more what was already said and continued less then
truth tellers. A next study investigated the effect of turn taking
on detecting deceit. 90 observers read transcripts and decided on
truthfulness of the statements; no-turn taking 47%, turn-taking
control 50% and turn-taking cues, 77%. So this study showed
that when interviewing using the forces turn-taking strategy,
observers are better at detecting deceit.
3. Analyzing the veracity of verbal and written statements:
CBCA (criteria based content analysis; weak theoretical basis
and difficult to use), RM (reality monitoring; useful when
investigating children, memory based lie detection tool and easy
to use) and the verifiable detail approach (memory based lie
detection tool; can be used with adults and within-subjects; is
more resistant to countermeasures and is easy to use; Nahari,
Vrij & Fisher, 2012). The verifiable detail approach is based on
the idea that liars want their lies to be detailed to be convincing,
but they don’t want to reveal too much evidence, so they give
details that can’t be checked. Truth tellers and liars had to write
down what they had just been doing and the amount of
verifiable details was measured. Truth tellers provided more
verifiable details than liars. In a next study, half of the
participants were told that the interviewer would ask details that
can be verified. This prime led to a high increase in verifiable
details in truth tellers, but not in liars (no effect of prime in liars;
interaction effect). So warning interviewees that the interviewer
wants details that they can check will led truthful people to give
you much more verifiable details than liars will, so this will
benefit the interviewer rather than the interviewee. In real life,
75% of all alibis are corroborated by a witness, and still 60-80%
of people are willing to lie for their friend or partner by
providing them with a false alibi. 60% feels that faking an alibi
is easy to do. How to prove that alibis are false? Study by
Nahari & Vrij (2014) in which pairs were or kept together
(truth) or separated during which one of the two committed a
crime (lie), followed by the request to provide a written
statement together about what happened. Truth tellers
mentioned more verifiable details, 39.14 than liar, 13.06. So
asking for verifiable details will magnify difference in providing
those details between truth tellers and liars. Importantly, these
details do not need to be checked, just mentioning they should
be checkable is enough.
Keynote 16.45-17.45
Cheryl Thomas (women’s human rights attorney):
Psychological abuse and domestic violence law. We are
working with activist groups and translating their wishes to the
judicial system. Domestic violence is defined within this talk as
violence between intimate partners. What happens after
reporting a case of domestic violence? Are the responses
effective? And would till report lead to a prosecution? Or would
the victim end up being blamed? We found 25 reports on the
judicial response to domestic violence. Shockingly, 20 years
ago, most countries did not have any laws that dealt with
domestic violence, but luckily now most countries in the West
do have such laws. However, domestic violence is still a
problem: The World Health Organization report (2013) showed
that 30% of women worldwide suffered from intimate partner,
physical violence. It’s the most prevalent form of violence
against women. Similarly, a large European Union survey (28
member states) found that 1 in 3 women had suffered from
sexual or physical violence since the age of 15. And these
statistics do not include any psychological and emotional abuse,
only physical, even though victims consistently identify
psychological violence (coercive, shaming, intimidating and
threatening behaviors) as a devastating part of the abuse. But
this psychological violence is harder to proof. She gave an
overview of current laws in different countries, such as Croatia,
Tonga and Latvia. Although domestic violence laws are
improving, the real effectiveness is dependent on how the
judicial system is implementing these laws. Removing the threat
of being prosecuted as a victim is an important step to make
victims come forward and report these crimes.
Friday the 27th of June Symposium 10.00-11.30 - Forensic
Expertise and Eyewitness identification and line-ups
De Keijser: The expert factor in DNA evidence: A source of
substantive variation. Really interesting talk during which the
author pointed out that there are differences between how DNA
forensic reports are written and how they are subsequently
interpreted in the courtroom. He ran a study in which the same
description of a criminal case including 3 types of DNA
evidence was sent to 30 forensic labs in Europe. A full report,
each one competed by a different forensic DNA expert, was
returned by 19 labs. First of all, a comparison of these reports
showed that the reports were very different. For example, some
reports were only 2 pages and only described the conclusion,
whilst other reports were up to 13 pages long and much more
informative. Subsequently, the conclusions that experts had
drawn based on the presented DNA evidence were compared,
and this comparison showed that although all reports were based
on the same DNA evidence, experts did not agree with each
other. Shockingly, statements went from: It is 5.7 million times
more likely that the DNA belongs to the suspect than to
someone else, which is highly incriminating for the suspect, to
statements that it was unclear if the DNA belonged to the
suspects, or even probably did not belong to the suspect. A
follow-up study was conducted to measure how people who
may participate as a jury one day interpreted these reports.
Participants were invited to make a judgment based on three of
these forensic reports, on the likelihood of the suspect's guilt.
Results showed that people's perception of the suspect's guilt
was mainly dependent on which forensic report they received.
These studies show that forensic reports are subjective and need
to be more standardized and harmonized to limit damage, but it
is also clear that the problem is bigger than just that.