Police officers' beliefs about, and use of, cues to deception

Abstract

Meta-analytic findings indicate that people, including police officers, are generally poor at detecting low-stakes deception. Related to this, investigations of behaviours that people reportedly use to make truth or lie judgements tend to conclude that people rely on incorrect stereotypes. However, consistent findings suggest that police officers are able to detect high-stakes deception; this implies that, at least in some contexts, police officers utilise reliable cues to deception. The research presented here was an investigation of cues to deception used by police officers (N = 69), when making veracity decisions about real world, high-stakes communications. Data were collected on both free report cues, and also prescribed cues that were known (from previous research), to discriminate between liars and truth-tellers in the communications that the police officers observed.Officers free reported using cues related to verbal content, emotion, body language, eyes, vocal cues, and external cues. Most prescribed cues were self-reportedly used correctly by large majorities of the officers, suggesting that they may not rely on inaccurate stereotypes.Self-report use of categories of free report cues, and prescribed cues, was not related to accuracy in detecting deception. As people may not always be aware of the behaviours on which their judgements are based, the relationships between some of the behaviours actually displayed in the communications, and group accuracy in detecting deception in those communications, were also investigated. Group accuracy was related to the presence of subjective, emotion-related cues in the communications.

Mock Juror Perceptions of Credibility and Culpability in an Autistic Defendant

“…In contrast, participants in the No label condition perceived the defendant as a character who was lying for his own interests, based on his body language, difficulty recalling the event, and lack of eye contact. This is consistent with research showing that credibility assessments are often based on verbal and non-verbal behaviours such as eye contact (Wright and Wheatcroft 2017) twitchy and repetitive movements (e.g., Granhag et al 2004), demeanor (Levine et al 2011), and story-telling ability (DePaulo et al 2003).…”

Deception Detection and Truth Detection Are Dependent on Different Cognitive and Emotional Traits: An Investigation of Emotional Intelligence, Theory of Mind, and Attention

“…Consistent with the Leakage Account, variance in accuracy rates among high-stakes observers could be due, in part, to variance in observers’ abilities to perceive and understand the meaning of targets’ verbal and nonverbal behaviors and to use them diagnostically. This process likely draws on cognitive and emotional resources (Wojciechowski, Stolarski, & Matthews, 2014), and so individual differences in these relevant resources may contribute, especially as accurate judgments may rely on integrating and understanding how targets’ behaviors relate to each other in internally (in)consistent ways (DePaulo et al, 2003; Wright & Wheatcroft, 2017). However, little research has consistently shown what personal factors might support accurate detection (Aamodt & Custer, 2006), and even less has investigated the contribution of specific cognitive and emotional resources.…”

Brief report: Perceived credibility of autistic witnesses and the effect of diagnostic information on credibility ratings

“…Jurors often base witness credibility assessments on a witness' verbal and non-verbal behaviours such as eye contact (Wright & Wheatcroft, 2017), twitchy and repetitive movements (e.g., Granhag, Andersson, Strömwall, & Hartwig, 2004), demeanor (Levine et al, 2011), surface features of speech such as pitch and intonation (Granhag et al, 2004;Ozuru & Hirst, 2006), and story-telling ability (DePaulo et al, 2003)all of which can be atypical in autistic individuals (e.g., de Marchena & Eigsti, 2010;Loveland et al, 1994;Peppé, McCann, Gibbon, O'Hare, & Rutherford, 2007;Senju & Johnson, 2009). Critically, however, while first impressions of autistic adults are often less favourable, several studies have recently reported that informing observers of an individual's autism diagnosis results in observers attributing the individual's behaviours to their autism, instead of using the behaviours as a basis for making more negative judgements about them as individuals in everyday contexts.…”