Handbook of Psychology of Investigative Interviewing: Current Developments and Future Directions

by Ray Bull, Tim Valentine, Dr Tom Williamson

  laboratory that have addressed eyewitness memory and truthfulness/decep-

  tion, with particular attention being given to the paper presented by myself

  and Elizabeth Wells and Linda Yuval at the 2nd International Investigative

  Interviewing Conference held at the University of Portsmouth, July 2006.

  Attention will be given to the following issues:

  Handbook of Psychology of Investigative Interviewing: Current Developments and Future Directions

  Edited by Ray Bull, Tim Valentine and Tom Williamson

  © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  286

  Handbook of Psychology of Investigative Interviewing

  1. Based on common

  - sense understandings of eyewitness behaviour, how

  would men and women anticipate their likely responses as truthful or

  deceptive eyewitnesses when questioned regarding a violent crime?

  2. What is the relationship between truthfulness/deception and eyewitness

  identifi cation?

  3. Can university students distinguish between deceptive and truthful eyewit-

  nesses in their testimony?

  4. Are there differences between deceptive (research) suspects and honest

  suspects in their repeated recall of real - world personal activities, including

  their participation in either a crime or non - crime incident, respectively?

  5. Can duration estimations be used as an indicator of deception?

  Common s ense and d eception in e yewitness r eports

  The objectives of police interviews are to determine whether a crime has

  occurred, to obtain accurate descriptions and evidence that can identify the

  individual(s) involved and to determine the credibility and truthfulness of the

  eyewitnesses and suspects (Gudjonsson, 1992 ; Kebbell & Wagstaff, 1997 ).

  Most deceptive witnesses, of course, will attempt to be persuasive and credible

  in their reports to the police. In contrast to the reports of truth - tellers, the

  reports of deceptive witnesses will probably be based in part on logical or

  common - sense understandings of eyewitness memory and on their beliefs

  about how they could best protect themselves from being found out. Previous

  studies of common knowledge of eyewitness memory have followed various

  approaches, including: the use of questionnaires (e.g., Kassin, Tubb, Hosch

  & Memon,

  2001 ; Benton, Ross, Bradshaw, Thomas

  & Bradshaw,

  2006 );

  written descriptions of trials or videotaped trials (e.g., Hosch, Beck

  &

  McIntyre, 1980 ; Wells, Lindsay & Tousignant, 1980 ); prediction studies of

  the accuracy of eyewitness identifi cation in staged crimes (e.g., Leippe, Wells

  & Ostrom, 1978 ; Kassin, 1979 ); and the cross - examination of eyewitnesses to

  staged crimes (e.g., Wells, Lindsay

  & Ferguson,

  1979 ; Lindsay, Wells

  &

  Rumpel, 1981 ). These different procedures have found relatively consistent

  results, that is, laypersons (potential jurors), as well as police offi cers, lawyers

  and trial judges, have poor understanding of many issues involved in eyewit-

  ness memory.

  Unlike the above studies, Yarmey (2004) asked participants how accurate/

  inaccurate they believe they would be as honest or deceptive eyewitnesses,

  respectively, in a criminal situation. Some 219 men and women in three

  Canadian cities were asked how they would respond if coerced to lie to protect

  a male perpetrator and female perpetrator, in contrast to being truthful and

  as accurate as possible. Participants were given a description of an armed

  robbery involving the shooting of a store worker, including a description of

  the persons involved. The incident was described as lasting either 15 seconds

  Truthfulness in Witnesses’ and Suspects’ Reports

  287

  or two minutes, and participants were told to assume they were the sole eye-

  witness to the crime. Participants assigned to the deceptive condition were

  told to assume that they and their family would be harmed if they did not

  protect the perpetrator in their eyewitness reports. Participants assigned to the

  truthful condition were asked to respond as they would when trying to be as

  accurate as possible. Truthful and deceptive participants were instructed to

  state their expected accuracy/distortion of reports in estimating the height,

  weight and age of the two perpetrators, their estimation of the duration of the

  incident and their identifi cation decision regarding a male suspect in a photo

  line - up.

  The results indicated that both truthful and deceptive witnesses had a bias

  towards overestimation rather than underestimation of the height, weight and

  age of the two perpetrators. As expected, the bias was greater for deceptive

  witnesses than for truthful witnesses. Note, however, one interesting sex

  difference: the data indicated that if coercive threats were made to self and

  family, women in the deceptive condition would be more likely than their male

  counterparts to signifi

  cantly distort their reports regarding perpetrator

  characteristics.

  Prior to making their identifi cation decisions, all participants were told to

  assume that the photo of the perpetrator was present in the photo line - up.

  Most truthful witnesses expected to be highly accurate (84% hits, 2% false

  alarms, 1% not there, 13% don ’ t know) in their photo identifi cation of the

  male suspect. In contrast, most deceptive witnesses indicated that they would

  say either that the suspect was not present in the line - up (31%), or that they

  did not know if he was present (37%), rather than falsely identify an innocent

  foil (4%). Truthful witnesses also expected to be signifi cantly more confi dent

  in their identifi cation decisions than deceptive witnesses. Contrary to expecta-

  tions, a substantial minority (27%) of deceptive witnesses said they would

  correctly select the perpetrator in spite of possible retribution to both them-

  selves and their family. Deceptive witnesses, in contrast to truthful witnesses,

  reported signifi cantly less confi dence in their identifi cation decisions. The reac-

  tion time to make identifi cation decisions also revealed signifi cant differences

  between truthful and deceptive witnesses. Truthful witnesses indicated that

  their identifi cation decisions would be signifi cantly faster than did deceptive

  witnesses.

  Interestingly, participants on average in both the truthful condition and the

  deceptive condition indicated that they would overestimate the 15

  - second

  criminal event by 306%, and the two - minute incident by 88%, with no signifi -

  cant differences between truthful and deceptive participants. Of interest is the

  fact that several experiments show that short - duration events are signifi cantly

  overestimated, and that women make signifi cantly larger overestimations than

  do men (e.g., Loftus, Schooler, Boone & Kline, 1987 ; Yarmey & Yarmey,

  1997 ). Consistent with the research literature, this study showed that women

  indicated that they would overestimate the duration intervals at better than a

  2 : 1 ratio than would men. It appears that women more than men may both

  288

  Handbook of Psychology of Investigative
Interviewing

  anticipate and then act in crime - like situations with the expectation that time

  will appear to move very slowly when they are witnesses to a highly emotional

  criminal event.

  Truthfulness and d eception in e yewitness i dentifi cation

  In a laboratory - designed experiment, Parliament & Yarmey (2002) presented

  undergraduate psychology students with a videotaped staged crime of a young

  man abducting an eight - year - old boy. Participants were randomly assigned

  to a deception group or a truthful group. Deceptive participants were instru-

  cted to lie to protect the perpetrator, whereas truthful participants were told

  to tell the truth and to identify the perpetrator to the best of their ability.

  One week later all participants were given either a seven - person sequentially

  presented suspect - absent photo line - up or suspect - present photo line - up. Of

  the 16 deceptive participants given the suspect - present line - up, 100% claimed

  the perpetrator was not there. In contrast, in the truthful group, 11 of 16

  participants (69%) correctly identifi ed the target, four identifi ed foils and one

  said he was not present. Given a suspect - absent line - up, 14 of 16 deceptive

  participants (88%) said he was not present and two made false identifi cations.

  In contrast, seven of 16 truthful witnesses (44%) correctly rejected the line - up

  and nine (56%) made false identifi cations. Deceptive participants also made

  their identifi cation decisions signifi cantly faster than truthful participants in

  both the suspect - present and the suspect - absent line - ups.

  In summary, these results suggest that deceptive eyewitnesses will behave

  signifi cantly differently from truthful witnesses in their identifi cation decisions

  and reaction times to make decisions. These results are interesting insofar as

  they suggest that eyewitness identifi cations are not consistent with how indi-

  viduals believe they would behave in a traumatic criminal situation with respect

  to their identifi cation decisions as either honest or deceptive eyewitnesses, as

  demonstrated in the questionnaire study on common sense just described.

  Future research is needed to determine the limits of these differences in a

  variety of situations.

  Judgements of d eception and a ccuracy of

  p erformance in e yewitness t estimony

  Can university students distinguish between eyewitnesses who were deceptive

  or truthful in their testimony, and either accurate or mistaken in their iden-

  tifi cation of a target in a photo line

  - up (Desmarais

  & Yarmey,

  2004 )?

  Participants, all of whom could be potential jurors, were shown videotapes

  taken from an unpublished study (Yarmey,

  2003 ) of four truthful and

  four deceptive eyewitnesses as they were being interviewed about their descrip-

  Truthfulness in Witnesses’ and Suspects’ Reports

  289

  tions and photo identifi cation of a perpetrator in a fi eld experiment. Two

  witnesses in each group were accurate and two were inaccurate in their line -

  up identifi cation as determined by post - experimental analysis. (Note that two

  of the deceptive eyewitnesses were correct in their identifi cation of the per-

  petrator in spite of their assigned role to ‘ protect ’ the suspect. This may have

  occurred because they forgot who the suspect was and mistakenly identifi ed

  him, or refused to maintain their role as deceptive eyewitnesses and correctly

  identifi ed the suspect.) Students rated each of the eight videotaped eyewit-

  nesses on his or her accuracy of testimony, honesty, competence, confi dence

  and credibility, and also indicated which verbal and nonverbal cues guided

  their ratings.

  Participants ’ decisions regarding deception and accuracy of eyewitness iden-

  tifi cation were not signifi cantly different from what would be expected by

  chance. However, participants were signifi cantly better in detecting honesty in

  truthful eyewitnesses than they were in detecting lying by deceptive eyewit-

  nesses. Also, participants were signifi cantly better in detecting accurate eyewit-

  nesses than inaccurate eyewitnesses.

  In terms of subjective impressions, truthful eyewitnesses were perceived as

  more honest and more credible than deceptive eyewitnesses. Also, truthful

  eyewitnesses were perceived to be more honest and more credible when they

  were correct in their identifi cation. In contrast, deceptive eyewitnesses were

  considered more honest and more credible when they were incorrect in their

  identifi cations. Thus, deceptive eyewitnesses appear to be able to project cred-

  ibility and trust when they misidentify a target.

  Participants reported that they relied on different verbal and nonverbal

  cues when judging truthful and deceptive eyewitnesses, and accurate and

  inaccurate testimony. For example, participants relied on pauses or hesita-

  tions in speech, frequent head movements and postural shifts to charac-

  terize deceptive witnesses. In contrast, truthful witnesses reportedly were

  discriminated by faster rates of speech, greater amounts of recalled details

  and higher frequency of smiles and laughter. Different cues also were used

  to differentiate between accurate and inaccurate eyewitnesses. Witnesses

  were judged more likely to be accurate if they spoke quickly, gave many

  descriptions, gave descriptions that were judged relevant and showed frequent

  arm and hand movements. In contrast, witnesses were judged to be inaccurate

  if they showed frequent pauses or hesitations in speech, admitted their forget-

  fulness or inadequacy and displayed frequent smiles and laughter. Eye contact

  or gaze were not said to be relied on to differentiate between truthful and

  deceptive eyewitnesses, whereas some studies have shown that liars engage in

  more eye contact than do truth - tellers (e.g., Vrij & Easton, 2002 ; Str ö mwall

  & Granhag, 2003 ).

  It may be concluded that people use different verbal and nonverbal cues to

  differentiate between truthful and deceptive eyewitnesses, and between accu-

  rate and inaccurate eyewitnesses. However, these cues are not powerful enough

  to allow laypersons to differentiate between accurate and inaccurate testimony,

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  Handbook of Psychology of Investigative Interviewing

  or between truthful and deceptive eyewitnesses, beyond what would be

  expected by chance.

  Deceptive s uspects ’ e vent r ecall and d uration e stimates

  a cross r epeated i nterviews

  Consider the following scenario: Two men, John Brown and Joe Smith, inde-

  pendently fi nd an unmarked envelope in a city street. Brown ’ s envelope con-

  tains $25,000 in bank notes payable to the holder, whereas Smith ’ s envelope

  contains some worthless advertisements. Brown realizes that the envelope has

  been lost and the proper thing to do would be to fi nd its rightful owner by

  calling the police. Instead, he makes the decision to keep the money, knowing

  full well that, from this point onward, he will have to lie to protect himself if

  he is ever questioned about how he obtained this money. A day later the police

  contact both Brown and Smith
because they were reportedly seen in the area

  where the money had gone missing. They are repeatedly questioned about

  their activities during the general time period when the bank notes were lost.

  Clearly, the two men have different motivations in describing their activities

  to the authorities. John Brown wants to keep the money and has decided to

  be deceptive in his reports, whereas Joe Smith, who has done nothing wrong,

  attempts to be accurate and truthful in his reports.

  The research to be described in this section mimics the above scenario

  (Yarmey, Wells & Yuval, 2006 ). This experiment had two purposes: fi rst, to

  explore the differences in reports of deceptive suspects and truthful suspects

  in their repeated accounts of personal activities, including a staged crime or a

  staged non - criminal incident, respectively; and second, to determine if time

  estimations may be used as an indicator of deception.

  Truthful and deceptive persons do differ somewhat in their verbal reports.

  For example, in contrast to truth - tellers, liars tend to use fewer words and

  offer fewer details in their stories (Undeutsch, 1982 ; deTurck & Miller, 1985 ;

  Zuckerman & Driver, 1985 ; Miller & Stiff, 1993 ; Anolli & Ciceri, 1997 ;

  Yuval, 2003 ). This may be because of the ease with which fewer details can

  be stored and remembered when liars are asked to repeat their testimony (Vrij,

  2000 ). Compared to truth - tellers, the stories reported by liars have been found

  to be less plausible but more structured in the chronological order of story -

  telling (i.e., this happened fi rst followed by this, then that, and so forth)

  (Zaparniuk, Yuille & Taylor, 1995 ; Granhag & Vrij, 2005 ).

  Granhag

  & Str

  ö mwall

  (2000) suggest that the

  ‘ repeat vs. reconstruct

  ’

  hypothesis can account for the different strategies that liars and truth - tellers

  employ over repeated interviews. They argue that deceivers recognize that, in

  order to avoid detection, they have to retain a clear memory of what they said

  in previous accounts. Second, because memory is reconstructive (Loftus, 1979 ;

  Baddeley,

  1990 ), individuals who are telling the truth will gain, lose and

  change information over time. Thus, deceivers will attempt to repeat what they