Should Police Use ACID? Training and Credibility Assessment Using Transcripts Versus Recordings

Abstract

There is a need for an applicable system of investigative interviewing and credibility assessment that extends science to practice. Experiment 1: Officers assessed the credibility of colleagues in a face-to-face interaction. Fourteen of sixteen officers were wrong in determining whether their colleague was responding honestly to them or lying to them. Experiment 2 compared untrained officers to officers trained in Assessment Criteria Indicative of Deception (ACID) in their ability to assess the credibility of statements regarding real and mock crimes by analyzing either verbatim transcripts or audio recordings. Officers who were trained in ACID performed significantly better after training than before, and significantly better than a group of officers who were never trained in ACID (89% correct versus 53% correct). No differences emerged due to analyzing transcripts versus recordings. The practical aspects of these results are discussed, including success rate, ease of application, and ease of training. The theoretical discussion includes differential recall enhancement and impression management. Finally, limitations and suggestions for future research are presented.