Arabic within culture forensic interviews: Arabic native speaking lay-observer truth and lie accuracy, confidence, and verbal cue selection

Abstract

Cross cultural differences in behavioral and verbal norms and expectations can undermine credibility, often triggering a lie bias which can result in false convictions. However, current understanding is heavily North American and Western European centric, hence how individuals from non-western cultures infer veracity is not well understood. We report novel research investigating native Arabic speakers’ truth and lie judgments having observed a matched native language forensic interview with a mock person of interest. 217 observers viewed a truthful or a deceptive interview and were directed to attend to detailedness as a veracity cue or given no direction. Overall, a truth bias (66% accuracy) emerged, but observers were more accurate (79%) in the truth condition with the truthful interviewee rated as more plausible and more believable than the deceptive interviewee. However, observer accuracy dropped to just 23% when instructed to use the detailedness cue when judging veracity. Verbal veracity cues attended too were constant across veracity conditions with ‘corrections’ emerging as an important veracity cue. Some results deviate from the findings of research with English speaking western participants in cross- and matched-culture forensic interview contexts, but others are constant. Nonetheless, this research raises questions for research to practice in forensic contexts centred on the robustness of western centric psychological understanding for non-western within culture interviews centred on interview protocols for amplifying veracity cues and the instruction to note detailedness of verbal accounts which significantly hindered Arabic speaker’s performance. Findings again highlight the challenges of pancultural assumptions for real-world practices.