Behaviour Analysis Interview

On the Psychology of Confessions: Does Innocence Put Innocents at Risk?

“…Yet Inbau et al (2001) advise that "the successful interrogator must possess a great deal of inner confidence in his ability to detect truth or deception, elicit confessions from the guilty, and stand behind decisions of truthfulness" (p. 78).…”

"I'd Know a False Confession if I Saw One": A Comparative Study of College Students and Police Investigators.

“…Consistently, research has shown that people are not proficient at judging truth and deception, often performing at no better than chance levels (DePaulo, Lassiter, & Stone, 1982;Memon, Vrij, & Bull, 2003;Vrij, 2000), that training programs produce only small and unreliable improvements in performance (Bull, 1989;Kassin & Fong, 1999;Porter, Woodworth, & Birt, 2000;Vrij, 1994;Zuckerman, Koestner, & Alton, 1984), and that police and other detection deception "professionals" typically perform no better than laypeople when such comparisons are made (Bull, 1989;DePaulo, 1994;DePaulo & Pfeifer, 1986;Ekman & O'Sullivan, 1991;Ekman, O'Sullivan, & Frank, 1999;Garrido & Masip, 1999;Garrido, Masip, & Herrero, 2004;Koehnken, 1987;Porter et al, 2000). In short, the law enforcement community assumes that investigators can become highly accurate judges of truth and deception (Inbau, Reid, Buckley, & Jayne, 2001), but there is little if any evidence to support this claim (for a recent meta-analysis of presumed cues to deception, see DePaulo et al, 2003; for a comprehensive review of deception detection issues in a forensic context, see .…”

“…Third, we sought to examine whether discrimination accuracy in judging confessions is influenced by the medium of their presentation. Many law enforcement professionals are trained to assess suspects by attending to behavioral symptoms, many of which are visual in nature (Inbau et al, 2001). Yet studies have suggested that auditory cues are more diagnostic of truth and deception (e.g., Anderson, DePaulo, Ansfield, Tickle, & Green, 1999;DePaulo et al, 1982).…”

Applying Deception Detection to True and False Confessions: A Novel Approach to Conducting Experiments in Legal Psychology

“…Vrij (2008b) points out that police officers in interrogation focus heavily on nonverbal behaviors, specifically visual cues like gaze, movement, or posture, which is recommended in the Reid method (Inbau et al, 2001), while neglecting to examine the speech of a suspect (i.e. verbal and paralingustic cues).…”

“…The most influential guide to interrogation, Criminal Interrogations and Confessions by Inbau, Reid, Buckley, & Jayne (2001), provides a multi-step approach to getting a suspect to confess, which uses three processes: (1) isolation in order to increase anxiety and a desire to escape, (2) confrontation that includes accusations and citing real or false evidence against the suspect, and (3) minimization in which the investigator justifies the crime and implies leniency in consequences once the suspect confesses. These three situational processes are described by Kassin (2008) in terms of how they may pressure an innocent and susceptible suspect to confess.…”