Perceived experience and police officers’ ability to detect deception

Abstract

PurposeFor police officers, the ability to distinguish between truthful and deceptive statements in interrogations is essential. However, research shows that their classification accuracy is typically rather low. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the ability to detect deception as a function of perceived experience, in a sample of German police officers and police trainees.Design/methodology/approachThe authors had the participants judge ten video recordings of a mock crime with respect to the displayed suspects’ truthfulness. Following the assumptions and findings of previous research, the authors expected their manipulation of perceived experience to increase detection accuracy, but expected objective experience not to be correlated with the ability to detect deception.FindingsAs expected, police officers and trainees in the experience condition achieved higher accuracy than control participants. On the objective self‐report measures of experience, no relationship with classification accuracy was found.Practical implicationsThe findings suggest that police officers’ objective experience does not perfectly translate into subjective experience. A subjective feeling of experience can be sufficient enough to increase detection accuracy, even if one is objectively inexperienced.Originality/valueThe manipulation proved to be a simple and efficient method of increasing judgmental accuracy in lie detection without increasing police officers’ actual knowledge or changing their beliefs about deception cues.

Perceived Familiarity with a Judgmental Situation Improves Lie Detection Ability

“…In all these studies, situational familiarity significantly improved the detection of deception for both fabricated and true accounts (overall from 8 to 22%, with d s ranging from 0.42 to 0.91), and the relative use of verbal content over nonverbal cues mediated the situational familiarity effect on accuracy. A new study by Reinhard, Dahm, and Scharmach (in press) found first evidence that perceived situational familiarity could improve the deception detection accuracy of police officers. In this study, police officers judged ten video recordings of a mock crime and judged the veracity of the displayed suspects’ behavior, who were accused of having stolen 20 EUR from a wallet.…”

Police Detection of Deception: Beliefs About Behavioral Cues to Deception Are Strong Even Though Contextual Evidence Is More Useful

“…However, almost no study has focused on officers' processes in detecting deception, that is, the mechanisms and strategies they use to assess veracity. The findings of the few extant studies (Masip, Garrido, Herrero, Antón, & Alonso, ; Nahari, ; Reinhard, Dahm, & Scharmach, ) are limited because of being laboratory‐based, thus providing only behavioral—and not contextual—information to observers. In this study, officers were questioned about real lies they detected in real life.…”

Are criminals better lie detectors? Investigating offenders' abilities in the context of deception detection

“…In Study 1, we used the stimulus material of Reinhard et al (2011, Study 1) who found higher accuracy levels when situational familiarity with the judgmental context was high. In another study using the same material, Reinhard, Dahm, and Scharmach (2012) found higher detection accuracy among police officers after inducing a feeling of being experienced in lie detection. In Study 2, we used the stimulus material of Dickhäuser et al (2012) who found higher accuracy levels when participants were instructed not to use stereotypical non‐verbal cues for their judgment.…”