Detecting Validity and Deception in Interviews and Statements Metacentre

1. Detecting Validity and Deception in Interviews and Statements Metacentre.net

4. Meet Elvis: The virtual border official who knows if you're lying • By Tim Hume, CNN • updated 6:54 AM EDT, Wed August 15, 2012 • (CNN) -- A lie-detecting virtual border official nicknamed "Elvis" is the latest high-tech approach to securing borders in the United States. • Developed by University of Arizona researchers in collaboration with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the computer is known as the Automated Virtual Agent for Truth Assessments in Real-Time -- or AVATAR -- kiosk. • It uses sensors to screen passengers for unusual physiological responses to questioning -- which can indicate a subject is lying. • "What we're looking for is changes in human physiology," said Doug Derrick, a member of the University of Arizona team behind the project. • "We've had great success in reliably detecting these anomalies -- things that people can't really detect."

5. Eliciting cues to deception and truth: What Matters are the Questions Asked. • http://www.investigativeinterviewing.co.nz/news/articles/eliciting-cues-to-deception-and-truth/

6. Deception is an attempt to distort perception Appearance, sound, touch, words self-deception is often beyond awareness and begs the question “Is it deliberate?”

7. Deception is a mechanism of self-protection and often indistinguishable from essential editing • Deception/sincerity is evident in two forms - physiologically and in language. • To perceive deception/sincerity in language the interviewer needs to analyze the statement. • To perceive deception/sincerity physiologically the interviewer needs to experience the subject.

8. Detection • To detect deception/sincerity in the statement we need to compare the statement with itself and with other evidence. • To detect deceptive/sincere non-verbal behaviour we need to compare the subject with themselves.

9. Physiological Symptoms can be detected in three ways

10. Non-verbal behaviour • Can be indicative of internal conflict about what is being said • Requires intense and unbroken attention made difficult by note taking and reading prepared questions. • We need to be careful interpreting emotion behind the mask and what it means

11. Expectations General interviewer better at detecting truthful than deceptive behaviour. Investigative Interviewer better at detecting deceptive than truthful. Pre-knowledge, (evidence) will bias the interviewer to ignore non-verbal. behaviour and focus on content, (what is said). Less pre-knowledge will lead to focus more on non-verbal and less on content.

12. The OPTICS principle • Observation • Perceived risk • Time • Interaction • Context • Sophistication

13. Observation Accessing Cues Relaxed Stressed Breathing From the abdomen Top of the chest Shallow / rapid jerky / sighing Facial Jowls sag / cheeks relax/ colour is even and more robust Raised or furrowed eyebrows / cheeks tighten / less colour – blanched / flared nostrils Mouth Lips fuller / deeper colour Lips narrow / tight / whitish-purple / swallowing / licking / clicking tongue Skin moisture Smooth / dry Cold / moist / clammy Pulse Slow / deep / even Rapid / shallow Body posture Relaxed / open Closed / rigid Voice Varying pitch / soft / even tone and rate Weak or loud / high pitch / rapid / strained / throat clearing / stuttering

14. ObservationEye Movement • Visual • Auditory • sounds • digital processing • Kinesthetic • sensations emotionstastesmell

15. Perceived Risk The greater the consequences the greater the stress. As stress elevates, the more apparent are physiological symptoms. How the subject perceives their risk will determine the degree of expressed stress. What do you perceive the subject has to lose or gain or both? Does the subject perceive their risk the same as you do? Do they expect the worst?

16. Perceived risk is affected by confidence • The story is: • -true but with omissions. • -part true, part false. • -an outright lie. • False stories are rarely entirely fabricated nor true stories a complete articulation of internal memories. • Most deceptive statements are true.

17. Perceived risk Do you want to elevate stress? Perhaps to see how the subject looks before focusing on critical issue questions. To shake the subject’s confidence. Do you want to decrease stress to establish rapport and differentiate the meaning of general anxiety from specific concerns? • Does the victim or witness fear retaliation? Is their fear realistic?

18. Time The interviewer needs to accelerate the process of establishing familiarity before assigning significance to behaviours. The interviewer needs to spend sufficient time with the subject to vary the subject’s stress level before asking critical issue questions. (compare appearance while eliciting different internal states)

19. Interaction • An interview is a process of interaction where each response affects the next response generating a unique path that cannot be entirely anticipated. The dynamic interaction and lack of predictability does not allow either party to completely control their physiological revelations which results in general anxiety.

20. Context • Every interview brings together unique individuals, circumstances and environment. • The meaning of expression can be confidently approximated only if the response clearly relates to the context.

22. Most reliable Non-verbal cues to deception • Speak in higher pitch • Fewer arm/hand/finger movements* • Fewer illustrations* • Take longer pauses • Fewer legs/feet movement*

23. Detect non-verbal behaviour • Look for both congruence and mixed messages • Deceptive subjects can be confronted with contradictions

24. Post-interview analysis • Requires accurate documentation • Audio-visual or audio recording preferred • Transcriptions should include all mistakes, pauses and incoherences.

25. Backmasking • Britney Spears reversed • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGY95TsZvYY

26. Patternicity is the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise. • Apophenia is the experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data • Pareidoliaa form of apophenia such as seeing the man in the moon or hearing messages in reversed recordings.

27. We need to recognize patterns instantly to survive.

29. I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdaniegThe phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid! Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? Yaeh, and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt.

30. Preparation Pitfalls • Similar cases bias expectations - the more experience the more likely you engage in: • Premature closure - selective attention to what “fits” and disregard inconsistent information. • Confirmation bias - type of question filters and moulds answers. • Defensive avoidance - material that is inconsistent is ignored or disregarded.

32. The Statement Profiler for Dummies • All statements are edited versions of fragments of experience. Ask statement: 1) Does this story tell you when, where, who, what, how, and why without prompting? 2) What is important that has been left out? 3) What do the words say? • 4) Does the story make sense? Reconstruct • 5) Imagine you were telling the story. How would you tell it?

33. Weighting • Calculate the number of words or lines to describe sections of the statement: • 1. Prologue: leading up to event • 2. Critical issue: event itself • 3. Epilogue: repercussions

34. Weighting factor is more useful the less the investigator interrupts the subject’s version

35. Prologue • Should give verifiable information such as time, date, location. • If it contains more lines than epilogue, 85% likelihood it is deceptive. • More than 33% of statement - likely deceptive.

36. I got to work at 8:00. Fred was on me right from the start like he’d been all week. He told me to get a car into bay 3. It was buried behind two other vehicles. The lot was full. It took me a 1/2 hour to get the car on the lift. He came at me and started shouting at me. I told him where to get off. We walked toward each other yelling. I had an extension cord in one hand and an air drill in the other. After I got the car off the lift the manager came in and told me to go home. He didn’t tell me a reason and I still don’t know why I was fired.

37. Following your intuition proves to be very accurate! • Going With Your Gut Feeling: Intuition Alone Can Guide Right Choice, Study Suggests In a behavioral experiment, Prof. Marius Usher of Tel Aviv University’s School of Psychological Sciences and his fellow researchers found that intuition was a surprisingly powerful and accurate tool. When forced to choose between two options based on instinct alone, the participants made the right call up to 90 percent of the time. The participants were able to calculate the different values accurately at exceptional speed, the researchers found. They were also able to process large amounts of data — in fact, their accuracy increased in relation to the amount of data they were presented. When shown six pairs of numbers, for example, the participants chose accurately 65 percent of the time. But when they were shown 24 pairs, the accuracy rate grew to about 90 percent.

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