Background. We examined whether the verbal cue, proportion of complications, was a more diagnostic cue to deceit than the amount of information provided (e.g., total number of details).Method. In the experiment, 53 participants were interviewed. Truth tellers (n = 27) discussed a trip they had made during the last twelve months; liars (n = 26) fabricated a story about such a trip. The interview consisted of an initial recall followed by a model statement (a detailed account of an experience unrelated to the topic of investigation) followed by a post-model statement recall. The key dependent variables were the amount of information provided and the proportion of all statements that were complications.Results. The proportion of complications was significantly higher amongst truth tellers than amongst liars, but only in the post-model statement recall. The amount of information provided did not discriminate truth tellers from liars in either the initial or post-model statement recall.Conclusion. The proportion of complications is a more diagnostic cue to deceit than the amount of information provided as it takes the differential verbal strategies of truth tellers and liars into account.

Purpose Lie detection in insurance claim settings is difficult as liars can easily incorporate deceptive statements within descriptions of otherwise truthful events. We examined whether the Verifiability Approach (VA) could be used effectively in insurance settings. According to the VA, liars avoid disclosing details that they think can be easily checked, whereas truth tellers are forthcoming with verifiable details. Method The study experimentally manipulated notifying claimants about the interviewer's intention to check their statements for verifiable details (the ‘Information Protocol’). It was hypothesized that such an instruction would (1) encourage truth tellers to provide more verifiable details than liars and to report identifiable witnesses who had witnessed the event within their statements, and (2) would enhance the diagnostic accuracy of the VA. Participants reported 40 genuine and 40 fabricated insurance claim statements, in which half the liars and truth tellers were notified about the interviewer's intention to check their statements for verifiable details. Results Both hypotheses were supported. In terms of accuracy, notifying claimants about the interviewer's intention to check their statements for verifiable details increased accuracy rates from around chance level to around 80%. Conclusion The VA, including the information protocol, can be used in insurance settings.

Providing interviewee's with a model statement prime consisting of checkable detail appears to be a useful refinement to the VA procedure.

Background. 'Interviewing to detect deception' research is sparse across different Ethnic Groups. In the present experiment, we interviewed truth tellers and liars from British, Chinese, and Arab origins. British interviewees belong to a low-context culture (using a communication style that relies heavily on explicit and direct language), whereas Chinese and Arab interviewees belong to high-context cultures (communicate in ways that are implicit and rely heavily on context). Method.Interviewees were interviewed in pairs and 153 pairs took part. Truthful pairs discussed an actual visit to a nearby restaurant, whereas deceptive pairs pretended to have visited a nearby restaurant. Seventeen verbal cues were examined.Results. Cultural cues (differences between cultures) were more prominent than cues to deceit (differences between truth tellers and liars). In particular, the British interviewees differed from their Chinese and Arab counterparts and the differences reflected low-and high-context culture communication styles.Conclusion. Cultural cues could quickly lead to cross-cultural verbal communication errors: the incorrect interpretation of a cultural difference as a cue to deceit. 192was not a culturally specific cue to deceit. We will keep this distinction between crosscultural cues, cues to deceit, and culturally specific cues to deceit in this article examining speech content.Cross-cultural research examining verbal cues to deception is sparse, but the work of Taylor and colleagues is a noteworthy exception (Taylor, Larner, Conchie, & Menacere, 2017;Taylor, Larner, Conchie, & van der Zee, 2014). They examined verbal cues to deception amongst several cultural groups: Arab, Pakistani, North African, South Asian, White British, and White European. It was found that a decrease in first person pronouns as a sign of deceit was moderated by culture. That is, White British participants reduced their first person pronouns to the greatest extent and North African participants to the least extent, with White European and South Asian participants in between those two groups (Taylor et al., 2017). In Taylor et al. (2014), several culturally specific cues to deceit emerged. For example, the use of negations (e.g., denials) was indicative of deception in Arab and Pakistani populations but not in White British and North African populations; and the use of spatial information was indicative of deception in North African and Pakistani populations but indicative of truth in Arab and White British populations.A different line of research, not examined in the current experiment, is cross-cultural lie detection: the ability of people to recognize deception across cultures. A general finding in thisalso sparseline of research is that judgement accuracy tends to decrease when judgements are made across cultures (Bond & Atoum, 2000;Bond, Omar, Mahmoud, & Bonser, 1990). See Taylor et al. (2014) for a summary of this research. Cross-cultural cuesA communication style is the way people communicate with others (Liu, 2016). Of the theoreti...

Research examining how truth tellers' and liars' verbal behavior is attenuated as a function of delay is largely absent from the literature, despite its important applied value. We examined this factor across 2 studies in which we examined the effects of a hypothetical delay (Experiment 1) or actual delay (Experiment 2) on liars' accounts. In Experiment 1-an insurance claim interview setting-claimants either genuinely experienced a (staged) loss of a tablet device (n = 40) or pretended to have experienced the same loss (n = 40). Truth tellers were interviewed either immediately after the loss (n = 20) or 3 weeks after the loss (n = 20), whereas liars had to either pretend the loss occurred either immediately before (n = 20) or 3 weeks before (n = 20) the interview (i.e., hypothetical delay for liars). In Experiment 2-a Human Intelligence gathering setting-sources had to either lie (n = 50) or tell the truth (n = 50) about a secret video they had seen concerning the placing of a spy device. Half of the truth tellers and liars where interviewed immediately after watching the video (n = 50), and half where interviewed 3-weeks later (n = 50; i.e., real delay for liars). Across both experiments, truth tellers interviewed after a delay reported fewer details than truth tellers interviewed immediately after the to-be-remembered event. In both studies, liars failed to simulate this pattern of forgetting and reported similar amounts of detail when interviewed without or after a delay, demonstrating a stability bias in reporting. (PsycINFO Database Record