prelims Page 3
Pressures, loyalties, obligations, needs, and restrictions frequently cause interviewees to be uncomfortable and not relaxed mentally. To gain their cooperation requires kindness and consideration of their position in life, their needs, and their privacy (Bowers 1976). Some interviewees feel abandoned. Their vulnerability may have a disruptive effect on their cooperation. Although interviewers cannot realistically take the place of neighbors and close kin to reduce the interviewee’s sense of abandonment, they can exhibit human warmth and thereby psychologically comfort them enough to encourage temporary compliance.
Responding to Anger
Many people have a real problem with anger; others claim that they never feel it. Some people, in the midst of rage, even deny that they are angry. If a person’s sense of safety, acceptance, or effectiveness is shaken, one resulting emotion will be anger (Cavanagh 1979). You might well encounter anger in the interview room, from both the truthful and the deceptive. Honest interviewees might become angry because of inconvenience, the loss of face, or other reasons. You can quell their anger by remaining calm and in control. On the other hand, deceptive interviewees may feign anger as a defensive ploy to hide their deception. They will often not be calmed down. Their intent is to put you on the defensive and to make it appear that your further effort is hopeless.
With interviewees exhibiting anger or anxiety, remain controlled, understanding, and nonjudgmental. If the interviewee verbally attacks you, avoid retaliation. If challenged into a defensive stance, think clearly and remain objective. Nothing positive is accomplished by taking up their challenge. Take pride in your emotional control even when faced with insults or threats that
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would cause other people to retaliate (Nirenberg 1963). An interview is more of a marathon than a sprint. Although you may think it necessary to win, the main challenge is to just stay in there. The culpable will likely lose the race for themselves with your help, so to speak.
The Interviewer’s Needs
Experienced interviewers learn to keep their own needs in check during an investigation. Investigators who try to fulfill egocen-tric, personal, or childish needs in an interview may become frustrated; they may act out personal tensions by misusing their authority (Bennis et al. 1973, p. 201). Freud stated, “Aggressiveness, held back, seems to involve grave injury. It really seems as though it is necessary for us to destroy some things or person in order not to destroy ourselves, in order to guard against the impulse of self-destruction” (Yeschke, 1993, p. 49). We are not far removed from our primitive nature. The potential for destructiveness goes with a position of authority. Given authority, some individuals become destructive in ways and at times that are not helpful to society.
Whatever your tactics, be sure they are ethical—that is, based on respect for the interviewee’s rights. The civilized and compassionate treatment of victims, witnesses, and suspects is necessary if you are to obtain truthful cooperation. Do not use coercion, intimidation, threats, promises, or duress to force a confession; such tactics are self-defeating and inappropriate as well as illegal. Intimidation reaps only resentment, not truthful cooperation. Although the real-world objective of forensic interviewing is often the swift and sure punishment of wrongdoers, there is no reason to treat interviewees abusively.
When the self-image and self-esteem of interview participants are at stake and basic human needs require fulfillment, pressure results. Police officers, in particular, are under intense stress as they routinely face the worst of humanity, witness terrible events, and make difficult decisions (Freeman 1942). Overstimulation of the body’s autonomic nervous system, which governs involuntary
Human Needs and Deception in the Interview 23
actions, routinely adds to distress, particularly when there is no way to vent built-up pressure. When the investigation becomes intense, stressful enough to cause emotional involvement, proficient interviewers try to remain detached.
DECEPTION
“The essence of lying is in deception, not in words. A lie may be told by silence, by equivocation, by the accent on a sylla-ble, by a glance of the eyes attaching a peculiar significance to a sentence, and all these kinds of lies are worse and baser by many degrees than a lie plainly worded.”
—John Ruskin
Before we explore deception, let’s establish some criteria for credibility. The credibility of interviewees is based on their truthfulness and believability, and it is related to their observation skills and accuracy in reporting. Here are five possible tests of interviewee credibility:
1. Was the interviewee present and aware during the incident? Presence includes more than being there physically.
The interviewee might have been “present” by means of a telephone or binoculars, for example. Awareness relates to age and intelligence. An adult may be able to describe the chain of events leading to an assault; a child may comprehend only that “Daddy hit Mommy.”
2. Was the interviewee attentive during the incident? The interviewer must distinguish the interviewee’s actual experience from his or her feelings about what was observed.
3. How well developed are the interviewee’s powers of observation?
4. Can the interviewee relate the facts briefly, correctly, and clearly without showing signs of emotional disturbance?
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5. Does the interviewer’s nonverbal behavior signal deception?
Truthfulness is signaled by an acute memory, a perceptive recounting of facts, and a flowing narration. Truthful interviewees display a consistent recollection of details and attempt to dig up related specifics, often offering more information than they are asked for. With encouragement, they remember facts they thought they had forgotten. They will allow the interviewer to see their mental wheels moving in search of additional details. With the truthful, you might witness a furrowed brow, squinted eyes, and a contemplative silence. They are open and relaxed in their manner of speech, though they may be somewhat uneasy. In addition, they clearly explain the sequence of events, wanting to be correct.
Deception is the intentional act of concealing or distorting the truth for the purpose of misleading. Interviewees deceive when they deliberately hide from the interviewer what they saw or what they did, and why.
Convincing liars are often self-assured and cunning. They can be difficult to identify because their comments are never too strong, too defensive, or out of context. Their motivation to lie is rarely based on anger or hostility; that would weaken the basis of their confidence. If they are trying to help someone by lying, they will be at ease, and their comments will sound natural. Because they have rationalized their lying, they maintain both confidence and peace of mind, suffering no pangs of conscience. Conscience is the internal sense of what is right and wrong that governs a person’s thoughts and actions, urging him or her to do the right thing. Conscience is expressed through behavior.
Warning Signs of Deception
“He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.”
—Sigmund Freud (as quoted in Davis, 1975)
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While some interviewees are capable of maintaining astonish-ingly good control of both verbal and nonverbal responses to questioning, most others display telltale signs of deception. Some can’t stand the tension of even trying to deceive, and they readily admit the truth (Binder and Price 1977, p. 118). As children, most people were taught the same set of social norms. They learned to treat strangers courteously, to behave hospitably toward visitors, to answer when spoken to, to tell the truth, and to obey the reasonable requests of authorities. All things being equal, people prefer to answer rather than to remain silent, and to tell the truth rather than to fabricate. Violating these social norms causes mo
st interviewees stress, and they display this stress through their verbal responses, nonverbal behavior, and physiological reactions during the interview.
Deceptive interviewees use language to mask their lies.
They avoid eye-to-eye contact as they talk around relevant topics, often offering seemingly useless and irrelevant comments. The deceptive characteristically answer questions in a limited manner without volunteering additional data. They take a protected stance, knowing that the less they say, the less likely it is that they will be caught in a lie. Although they smile and look somewhat composed, their tone of voice and physical actions appear unnatural to a skilled interviewer.
More than a gut feeling, or intuition, is required to detect deception. It helps to be so familiar with the verbal and nonverbal behaviors that signal deception that you note them automatically. You should continually be alert for inconsistent, evasive responses punctuated by nonverbal signals that indicate imbalance. To me, imbalance is reflected in interviewee unevenness of emphasis, verbally and nonverbally. It is a state of disharmony or inability to function in proportion to the situation. Social scientists have found that vocal intonation, timing, silence, body positioning, facial expression, and eye movement may confirm, obscure, or contradict spoken words. Although there is no fail-safe method of detecting deception in an interviewee, certain verbal, nonverbal, and physiological signs have generally been
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reliable. These indicators of probable deception are discussed below.
When you suspect that an interviewee is being less than truthful, do not immediately announce your suspicion. Instead, go on with your questioning, and continue to note the verbal and nonverbal signs of deception. Challenging the interviewee’s veracity before you have accumulated sufficient data on which to make a conclusive decision may hinder the progress of the interview.
Verbal Signs
Only a skilled actor can lie in a believable way—and then with only a very limited expression of the facts. The deceptive offer convoluted explanations or sophisticated evasions. They may present a complex, tangled, or confused explanation in response to your question, or they may try to dodge the question altogether. Their answers are general in nature and broad in content.
Their desire, apparently, is to say as little as possible while hiding in their self-made emotional shelter. They may think that if they are silent and motionless, no one will guess they are hiding the truth. They seem to take comfort in their lack of spontaneity, and they think they are safe and secure as they try not to be noticed.
A lack of clear thinking may signal deception and evasiveness. When interviewees express themselves in a calculated, dis-sociated, or awkward manner rather than in a smooth, flowing way, something, somewhere, is not altogether right. The deceptive tend to assert that they don’t remember, while truthful interviewees tend not to say this. A person who wants to hide relevant information must make a conscious effort to keep the truth submerged. That effort requires contemplation, intention, and planning, all of which may happen in a brief moment, followed by a “memory lapse.” The deceptive answer more evasively than the truthful. They use phrases like “I would deny that allegation” and “I can’t tell you much about that.” They may attempt to distract the interviewer with inappropriate friendliness, compliments, or seductive behavior.
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When interviewees begin with the words “To be honest,”
“To tell the truth,” “Frankly,” or “Honestly,” they most likely do not intend to be frank or honest. Interviewees who express objections rather than denials when questioned are probably not being completely truthful. Interviewees who were later shown to be lying have said the following:
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“I have plenty of money in the bank. I would have no reason to take that money.”
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“I’m not the kind of person who would think of doing that.”
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“I don’t go around doing those kinds of things.”
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“I couldn’t do something like that.”
The objections tend to be true, at least in part. The suspect who utters the first objection may indeed have money in the bank, but that response is not a clear denial of having stolen. Honest denials are straightforward and crystal clear: “No, I didn’t steal the money.”
Nonverbal Signs
Gestures, mannerisms, facial expressions, and other forms of nonverbal communication are learned throughout life; they reveal underlying personality traits, subconscious attitudes, intentions, and conflicts. The more you know about nonverbal communication, the better an interviewer you will be. Your observation of the interviewee’s unintentional nonverbal cues can help you make decisions about his or her truthfulness. When interviewees twist the truth, they leave clues in their facial expressions and bodily movements. Their expressions and body language may convey internal struggles as they try to cover the outward signs of lying. A mere twitch or an effort to control such a barely perceptible movement is enough indication to warn that the interviewee’s response may be a fabrication (Davis 1975, p. 25).
After answering a question dishonestly, some interviewees immediately look searchingly at your eyes and face for any non-
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verbal signs of your skepticism. This subconscious, questioning, wide-open look lasts only a fraction of a moment. While deceptive interviewees pretend to ponder questions, they may engage in some physical action that betrays their desire to escape from the interview—mentally if not physically. This uneasiness may manifest itself as they shuffle their feet, cross their legs, or cover their eyes. They often avoid eye contact by looking around the room or at the floor, frequently picking real or imagined lint from their clothes. In addition, they blink more often than truthful interviewees.
They may appear calm—but in a forced way. Although they smile and look composed, the deceptive often seem physically restrained. Their movements are often overly controlled and repetitive, lacking complexity and variety, not spontaneous and free moving. Interviewees who engage in rehearsed gestures, without putting their bodies into motion in a smooth, convincing manner, signal their intent to deceive. They present a false image of themselves and hope that you will accept it without question.
Physiological Signs
It is not unusual for the deceptive to exhibit symptoms of physical shock while answering questions. These symptoms include light-headedness and numbness in the extremities due to reduced blood circulation. These physiological symptoms may be a response to the interviewee’s feeling of being trapped and not knowing what to do. When lying, interviewees may also exhibit physiological cues such as burping, sweating, crying, and appearing to be in a state of turmoil. Truthful individuals generally do not undergo such stress when questioned, particularly when the interviewer remains calm and restrained.
Psychological Motives for Deception
No one is forced to lie; it is a conscious decision. Deceptive interviewees might choose to hide the truth for a couple of reasons.
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For some people, the interview is an exercise in survival. Telling the truth might result in a confession, and with that might come shame, embarrassment, and punishment. How interviewees evaluate the hazards in any given interview is up to the individual being questioned and depends on what they have to hide. For other people, the interview is a game. The punishment and shame associated with getting caught are not as important as matching wits with the investigator. They make it their challenge to outsmart the interviewer. Much more could be said regarding the psychological motives behind deception, but in one form or another, these motives are woven among the interviewee’s efforts to satisfy basic human needs.
The Pathological Liar
Pathological liars habitually tell lies so exaggerat
ed or bizarre that they are suggestive of mental disorder. They fabricate when it would be simpler and more convenient to tell the truth. Their stories are often complex rationalizations leading to self-vindica-tion. Pathological liars have been fabricating stories since childhood and can be recognized by their continued performance throughout life (Cameron and Cameron 1951, pp. 206–208).
As interviewees, pathological liars are quite convincing when they say they did not just say what they actually did say.
Most have the ability to refute your recall and notes pertaining to their comments. When faced with what they said only moments before, they will say something like, “Oh, no, I didn’t say that!”
This is when you have a reality check with yourself to see if you have lost your grip on the here and now. You know you know what they said, but you check your notes to be sure. This is not the time to enter into an I-said-you-said game with the interviewee.
Be strong and restrain your inclination to do battle because you will lose in the end. After all, if you want information you can use, you can’t win such a battle and expect friendly cooperation.
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The Psychopathic Personality
The psychopathic personality develops along asocial and amoral lines and cannot adjust to society’s standards. The psychopath is supremely selfish, living only for immediate gratification without regard for the consequences. Normal individuals often sacrifice for the possibilities of the future and show a willingness to defer certain gratifications.
Psychopaths have no understanding of, and even express contempt for, the future. Dr. E. W. Cocke says this about the psychopath (1953, p. 13):