No abstract

We hypothesised that the responses of pairs of liars would correspond less with each other than would responses of pairs of truth tellers, but only when the responses are given to unanticipated questions. Liars and truth tellers were interviewed individually about having had lunch together in a restaurant. The interviewer asked typical opening questions which we expected the liars to anticipate, followed by questions about spatial and/or temporal information which we expected suspects not to anticipate, and also a request to draw the layout of the restaurant. The results supported the hypothesis, and based on correspondence in responses to the unanticipated questions, up to 80% of liars and truth tellers could be correctly classified, particularly when assessing drawings.

In this paper we argue that there is little need for more of the traditional deception detection research in which observers assess short video clips in which there are few (if any) cues to deception and truth. We argue that a change in direction is needed and that researchers should focus on the questions the interviewer needs to ask in order to elicit and enhance cues to deception. We discuss three strands of research into this new 'interviewing to detect deception' approach. We encourage practitioners to use the proposed techniques and encourage other researchers to join us in conducting more research in this area. We offer some guidelines for what researchers need to keep in mind when carrying out research in this new paradigm.

This experiment examined children's and undergraduates' verbal and nonverbal deceptive behavior, and the extent to which their truths and lies could be correctly classified by paying attention to these responses. Participants (N = 196) aged 5-6, 10-11, and 14-15, as well as university undergraduates, participated in an erasing the blackboard event, and told the truth or lied about the event afterwards. Nonverbal and verbal responses were coded, the latter with Criteria-Based Content Analysis and Reality Monitoring. Although children and undergraduates demonstrated different behaviors (for example, the children obtained lower CBCA scores and made more movements), actual cues to deceit were remarkably similar across different age groups (for example, both 5-6-year-olds and undergraduates obtained lower CBCA scores and made fewer movements while lying). A combination of verbal and nonverbal lie detection methods resulted in more correct classifications of liars and truth tellers than the verbal and nonverbal lie detection methods individually, with the combined method obtaining hit rates as high as 88%.

Animals are used by humans in many ways, yet science has paid little attention to the study of human-animal relationships (Melson 2002). In the present study participants (n= 96) completed a questionnaire on attitudes towards animal use and individual differences were examined to determine which characteristics might underlie these attitudes ('belief in animal mind', age, gender, experience of animals, vegetarianism, political stance, and living area). It emerged that participants held different views for different types of animal use, and that belief in animal mind (BAM) was a powerful and consistent predictor of these attitudes, with BAM together with gender and vegetarianism predicting up to 37% of the variance in attitudes towards animal use.Thus future research should acknowledge the importance of BAM as a major underlying factor of attitudes towards animal use, and should also distinguish between different types of animal use when measuring attitudes. We proposed that the large effect of BAM might be due to increasing interest in animal mind over the past decade.