Abstract
Asking unanticipated questions in investigative interviews can elicit differences in the verbal behaviour of truth-tellers and liars: When faced with unanticipated questions, liars give less detailed and consistent responses than truth-tellers. Do such differences in verbal behaviour lead to an improvement in the accuracy of interviewers’ veracity judgements? Two empirical studies evaluated the efficacy of the unanticipated questions technique. Experiment 1 compared two types of unanticipated questions (questions regarding the planning of a task and questions regarding the specific spatial and temporal details associated with the task), assessing the veracity judgements of interviewers and verbal content of interviewees’ responses. Experiment 2 assessed veracity judgements of independent observers. Overall, the results provide little support for the technique. For interviewers, unanticipated questions failed to improve veracity judgement accuracy above chance. Reality monitoring analysis revealed qualitatively distinct information in the responses to the two unanticipated question types, though little distinction between the responses of truth-tellers and liars. Accuracy for observers was greater when judging transcripts of unanticipated questions, and this effect was stronger for spatial and temporal questions than planning questions. The benefits of unanticipated questioning appear limited to post-interview situations. Furthermore, the type of unanticipated question affects both the type of information gathered and the ability to detect deceit.
Highlights
Bond et al’s [1] influential meta-analysis of deception detection reached a worrying conclusion: individuals, regardless of training or experience, are generally poor at distinguishing between truth and lies
Analysing the accuracy of veracity judgements made across 206 studies involving over 20,000 judges, the authors found an overall accuracy rate of just 54%, in part because the general public and trained experts alike appear erroneously to put their faith in non-verbal indicators of deception [2,3]
Motivation to comply was high in both groups, with no difference in ratings between truth tellers (M = 6.08, SD = 1.05) and liars (M = 6.10, SD = 0.86), t (118) = -0.10, p =
Summary
Bond et al’s [1] influential meta-analysis of deception detection reached a worrying conclusion: individuals, regardless of training or experience, are generally poor at distinguishing between truth and lies. Analysing the accuracy of veracity judgements made across 206 studies involving over 20,000 judges, the authors found an overall accuracy rate of just 54%, in part because the general public and trained experts alike appear erroneously to put their faith in non-verbal indicators of deception [2,3]. DePaulo et al’s [4] meta-analysis revealed that statements made by liars were less consistent, less coherent, and contained fewer details than those. Outcomes of unanticipated questioning analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript
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