Using the Reality Interview improves the accuracy of the Criteria‐Based Content Analysis and Reality Monitoring

Abstract

SummaryActive interviewing approaches can exploit the verbal differences between truthtellers and liars, thus improving detecting deception. One such method is the Reality Interview (RI) aimed to facilitate recall from truthtellers, while increasing the difficulty for liars. This study investigated whether the RI could improve the diagnostic accuracy of the Reality Monitoring and the Criteria‐Based Content Analysis. Liars and truthtellers were either asked to freely recall an event or interviewed with the RI. As hypothesized, the RI improved the discriminability of Reality Monitoring and Criteria‐Based Content Analysis over Free Recall. Honest responses were longer, and the RI increased the word count difference between honest and false statements. However, after correcting for word count, results were no longer significant, showing its importance for deception detection. Nonetheless, the RI increased verbal differences between truthtellers and liars, demonstrating that using the RI with verbal credibility assessment tools is a powerful combination for investigative interviewing.

Man versus Machine: Comparing manual with LIWC coding of perceptual and contextual details for verbal lie detection

“…A factor that may explain variation in the current set of studies is whether statements were about past or future experiences. It is noteworthy that we found significant effects for the statements about past events (the Bogaard et al, 2019 andVerschuere et al, 2021 datasets) but not those about intentions (the Mac Giolla et al, 2019 andWarmelink et al, 2012 datasets). Reality Monitoring theory was initially developed for past actions and may not readily apply to future actions (for a discussion see Mac Giolla et al, 2019), which may explain the higher validity in the statements about past events than those about future events.…”

“…We asked several verbal lie detection researchers to provide us with datasets that contained truthful and deceptive statements manually coded for perceptual and contextual details. We obtained four datasets from four different laboratories (Bogaard, Colwell, & Crans, 2019;Warmelink, Vrij, Mann, Jundi, & Granhag, 2012;Mac Giolla, Ask, Granhag, & Karlsson, 2019;Verschuere, Schutte, van Opzeeland, & Kool, 2021). A detailed description can be found in the references provided, but below we list the key features of the datasets.…”

“…For full details, we refer to Bogaard et al (2019). In brief, 100 students from Maastricht University were asked to provide both a truthful account about an emotional event that they had really experienced and that lasted a brief and discrete period of time, and, based on a realistic scenario, a deceptive account about an event that had never happened.…”

“…2 Interpretation of the LIWC findings is qualified by the observation that the LIWC scoring differed greatly with language. LIWC recognized the majority of the Dutch text(Bogaard et al, 2019: 85.71, Verschuere et al, 2021 81.55%) and the English text(Warmelink et al, 2012; 94.01%) datasets, yet only 55.43% of the Swedish text(Mac Giolla et al, 2019), showing that the dictionaries differ in comprehensiveness.…”

Subcampos de aplicación de la psicología jurídica

“…Respecto a la evidencia empírica, por medio de este instrumento se ha encontrado que las declaraciones verdaderas son más extensas y aportan mayor cantidad de detalles, a diferencia de relatos falsos o inventados (Bogaard et al, 2019). Sin embargo, a pesar de que la cantidad de detalles se vincula con hecho creíbles, estas características en los relatos deben ser analizadas con cautela, ya que pueden provocar sesgos en la evaluación y juicios erróneos (Manzanero et al, 2019).…”