Repeated Interrogations: Verbal and Non-verbal Cues to Deception

• The major aim of this study was to investigate to what extent verbal and non-verbal features of liars’ and truth-tellers’ behaviour change during the course of repeated interrogations. After seeing a staged event, 24 suspects (12 liars and 12 truth-tellers) were interrogated three times over a period of 11 days. In terms of the non-verbal features, and in line with our prediction, we found that the liars displayed significantly fewer smiles, self-manipulations, pauses, and less gaze aversion than truthtellers. Furthermore, over time the initial differences between liars’ and truth-tellers’ non-verbal behaviour increased for smiles, gaze aversion and pauses. In addition, we found that the cue ‘richness of detail’—the most indicative verbal marker for truth as given in previous research—had no discriminative power at any of the interrogation sessions. Finally, and in contrast to beliefs held by supposed expert lie-catchers (e.g. judges and police officers), truthful and deceptive statements were found to be equally consistent over time. The psycho-legal implications of the above findings are discussed.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Psykologi -- Tillämpad psykologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Psychology -- Applied Psychology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Deception detection

nonverbal cues

verbal cues

repeated interrogation

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)