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Samantha Mann

Publications and source records attributed to Samantha Mann.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

Cues to deception and ability to detect lies as a function of police interview styles.

In Experiment 1, we examined whether three interview styles used by the police, accusatory, information-gathering and behaviour analysis, reveal verbal cues to deceit, measured with the Criteria-Based Content Analysis (CBCA) and Reality Monitoring (RM) methods. A total of 120 mock suspects told the truth or lied about a staged event and were interviewed by a police officer employing one of these three interview styles. The results showed that accusatory interviews, which typically result in suspects making short denials, contained the fewest verbal cues to deceit. Moreover, RM distinguished between truth tellers and liars better than CBCA. Finally, manual RM coding resulted in more verbal cues to deception than automatic coding of the RM criteria utilising the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software programme. In Experiment 2, we examined the effects of the three police interview styles on the ability to detect deception. Sixty-eight police officers watched some of the videotaped interviews of Experiment 1 and made veracity and confidence judgements. Accuracy scores did not differ between the three interview styles; however, watching accusatory interviews resulted in more false accusations (accusing truth tellers of lying) than watching information-gathering interviews. Furthermore, only in accusatory interviews, judgements of mendacity were associated with higher confidence. We discuss the possible danger of conducting accusatory interviews.

Adolescent↗

An empirical test of the behaviour analysis interview.

The present experiment is the first empirical test of the Behaviour Analysis Interview (BAI), an interview technique developed by F. E. Inbau, J. E. Reid, J. P. Buckley, & B. C. Jayne (2001) designed to evoke different verbal and non-verbal responses from liars and truth-tellers. Inbau et al. expect liars to be less helpful than truth-tellers in investigations and to exhibit more nervous behaviours. Just the opposite predictions, however, follow from the deception literature, which notes that liars take their credibility less for granted and are therefore more aware of their responses and their impact on others. This suggests that liars' answers should be more helpful than truth-tellers' answers, and liars' non-verbal responses should appear more relaxed than truth-tellers' non-verbal responses. In the present experiment, 40 participants (undergraduate students) lied or told the truth about an event during a BAI interview. The interviews were coded according to Inbau et al.'s guidelines. The results showed that, compared to liars, truth-tellers (a) were more naive and evasive when explaining the purpose of the interview, and (b) were less likely to name someone who they felt certain did not commit the crime. Truth-tellers also exhibited more nervous behaviours. The results were consistent with the predictions of the deception literature, and directly opposed to the predictions of BAI.

Adolescent↗

Detecting true lies: police officers' ability to detect suspects' lies.

Ninety-nine police officers, not identified in previous research as belonging to groups that are superior in lie detection, attempted to detect truths and lies told by suspects during their videotaped police interviews. Accuracy rates were higher than those typically found in deception research and reached levels similar to those obtained by specialized lie detectors in previous research. Accuracy was positively correlated with perceived experience in interviewing suspects and with mentioning cues to detecting deceit that relate to a suspect's story. Accuracy was negatively correlated with popular stereotypical cues such as gaze aversion and fidgeting. As in previous research, accuracy and confidence were not significantly correlated, but the level of confidence was dependent on whether officers judged actual truths or actual lies and on the method by which confidence was measured.

Adult↗

Suspects, lies, and videotape: an analysis of authentic high-stake liars.

This study is one of the very few, and the most extensive to date, which has examined deceptive behavior in a real-life, high-stakes setting. The behavior of 16 suspects in their police interviews has been analyzed. Clips of video footage have been selected where other sources (reliable witness statements and forensic evidence) provide evidence that the suspect lied or told the truth. Truthful and deceptive behaviors were compared. The suspects blinked less frequently and made longer pauses during deceptive clips than during truthful clips. Eye contact was maintained equally for deceptive and truthful clips. These findings negate the popular belief amongst both laypersons and professional lie detectors (such as the police) that liars behave nervously by fidgeting and avoiding eye contact. However, large individual differences were present.

Adolescent↗