Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modeling (2nd ed.)

/pdf/lying-moral-choice-in-public-and-private-life-52gzwr5asg.pdf

Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life

In this article we argue that self-deception evolved to facilitate interpersonal deception by allowing people to avoid the cues to conscious deception that might reveal deceptive intent. Self-deception has two additional advantages: It eliminates the costly cognitive load that is typically associated with deceiving, and it can minimize retribution if the deception is discovered. Beyond its role in specific acts of deception, self-deceptive self-enhancement also allows people to display more confidence than is warranted, which has a host of social advantages. The question then arises of how the self can be both deceiver and deceived. We propose that this is achieved through dissociations of mental processes, including conscious versus unconscious memories, conscious versus unconscious attitudes, and automatic versus controlled processes. Given the variety of methods for deceiving others, it should come as no surprise that self-deception manifests itself in a number of different psychological processes, and we discuss various types of self-deception. We then discuss the interpersonal versus intrapersonal nature of self-deception before considering the levels of consciousness at which the self can be deceived. Finally, we contrast our evolutionary approach to self-deception with current theories and debates in psychology and consider some of the costs associated with self-deception.

http://humancond.org/_media/papers/vonhippel_trivers_11_self_deception.pdf

The evolution and psychology of self-deception

Recently, in a number of high-profile cases, defendants who were prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced on the basis of false confessions have been exonerated through DNA evidence. As a historical matter, confession has played a prominent role in religion, in psychotherapy, and in criminal law-where it is a prosecutor's most potent weapon. In recent years, psychologists from the clinical, personality, developmental, cognitive, and social areas have brought their theories and research methods to bear on an analysis of confession evidence, how it is obtained, and what impact it has on judges, juries, and other people. Drawing on individual case studies, archival reports, correlational studies, and laboratory and field experiments, this monograph scrutinizes a sequence of events during which confessions may be obtained from criminal suspects and used as evidence. First, we examine the preinterrogation interview, a process by which police target potential suspects for interrogation by making demeanor-based judgments of whether they are being truthful. Consistent with the literature showing that people are poor lie detectors, research suggests that trained and experienced police investigators are prone to see deception at this stage and to make false-positive errors, disbelieving people who are innocent, with a great deal of confidence. Second, we examine the Miranda warning and waiver, a process by which police apprise suspects of their constitutional rights to silence and to counsel. This important procedural safeguard is in place to protect the accused, but researchers have identified reasons why it may have little impact. One reason is that some suspects do not have the capacity to understand and apply these rights. Another is that police have developed methods of obtaining waivers. Indeed, innocent people in particular tend to waive their rights, naively believing that they have nothing to fear or hide and that their innocence will set them free. Third, we examine the modern police interrogation, a guilt-presumptive process of social influence during which trained police use strong, psychologically oriented techniques involving isolation, confrontation, and minimization of blame to elicit confessions. Fourth, we examine the confession itself, discussing theoretical perspectives and research on why people confess during interrogation. In particular, we focus on the problem of false confessions and their corrupting influence in cases of wrongful convictions. We distinguish among voluntary, compliant, and internalized false confessions. We describe personal risk factors for susceptibility to false confessions, such as dispositional tendencies toward compliance and suggestibility, youth, mental retardation, and psychopathology. We then examine situational factors related to the processes of interrogation and show that three common interrogation tactics-isolation; the presentation of false incriminating evidence; and minimization, which implies leniency will follow-can substantially increase the risk that ordinary people will confess to crimes they did not commit, sometimes internalizing the belief in their own culpability. Fifth, we examine the consequences of confession evidence as evaluated by police and prosecutors, followed by judges and juries in court. Research shows that confession evidence is inherently prejudicial, that juries are influenced by confessions despite evidence of coercion and despite a lack of corroboration, and that the assumption that "I'd know a false confession if I saw one" is an unsubstantiated myth. Finally, we address the role of psychologists as expert witnesses and suggest a number of possible safeguards. In particular, we argue that there is a need to reform interrogation practices that increase the risk of false confessions and recommend a policy of mandatory videotaping of all interviews and interrogations.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1529-1006.2004.00016.x

The Psychology of Confessions A Review of the Literature and Issues

Recent DNA exonerations have shed light on the problem that people sometimes confess to crimes they did not commit. Drawing on police practices, laws concerning the admissibility of confession evidence, core principles of psychology, and forensic studies involving multiple methodologies, this White Paper summarizes what is known about police-induced confessions. In this review, we identify suspect characteristics (e.g., adolescence; intellectual disability; mental illness; and certain personality traits), interrogation tactics (e.g., excessive interrogation time; presentations of false evidence; and minimization), and the phenomenology of innocence (e.g., the tendency to waive Miranda rights) that influence confessions as well as their effects on judges and juries. This article concludes with a strong recommendation for the mandatory electronic recording of interrogations and considers other possibilities for the reform of interrogation practices and the protection of vulnerable suspect populations.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1596284_code797450.pdf?abstractid=1483878&type=2

Police-Induced Confessions: Risk Factors and Recommendations

Decades of research has shown that people are poor at detecting lies Two explanations for this finding have been proposed First, it has been suggested that lie detection is inaccurate because people rely on invalid cues when judging deception Second, it has been suggested that lack of valid cues to deception limits accuracy A series of 4 meta-analyses tested these hypotheses with the framework of Brunswik's (1952) lens model Meta-Analysis 1 investigated perceived cues to deception by correlating 66 behavioral cues in 153 samples with deception judgments People strongly associate deception with impressions of incompetence (r = 59) and ambivalence (r = 49) Contrary to self-reports, eye contact is only weakly correlated with deception judgments (r = -15) Cues to perceived deception were then compared with cues to actual deception The results show a substantial covariation between the 2 sets of cues (r = 59 in Meta-Analysis 2, r = 72 in Meta-Analysis 3) Finally, in Meta-Analysis 4, a lens model analysis revealed a very strong matching between behaviorally based predictions of deception and behaviorally based predictions of perceived deception In conclusion, contrary to previous assumptions, people rarely rely on the wrong cues Instead, limitations in lie detection accuracy are mainly attributable to weaknesses in behavioral cues to deception The results suggest that intuitive notions about deception are more accurate than explicit knowledge and that lie detection is more readily improved by increasing behavioral differences between liars and truth tellers than by informing lie-catchers of valid cues to deception

Why Do Lie-Catchers Fail? A Lens Model Meta-Analysis of Human Lie Judgments.

Deception detection has largely failed to investigate guilty and innocent suspects’ strategies. In this study, mock suspects (n=82) were interrogated by police trainees (n=82) who either were or were not trained in the technique to strategically use the evidence (the SUE technique). Analyses revealed that guilty suspects to a higher degree than innocent suspects applied strategies in order to appear truthful. Guilty suspects reported diverse strategies, while innocent suspects reported the strategy to tell the truth like it had happened, indicating a belief in the visibility of innocence. The realism in the suspects’ expectation about how their veracity was judged was largely dependent on the way in which they had been interrogated. The truth-telling suspects who were interrogated according to the SUE technique were optimistic about being judged as truthful; this optimism was warranted as the vast majority of them were classified as truthful. The SUE technique seems to help (a) spotting guilty su...

Guilty and innocent suspects’ strategies during police interrogations

Research on deception detection in legal contexts has neglected the question of how the use of evidence can affect deception detection accuracy. In this study, police trainees (N=82) either were or were not trained in strategically using the evidence when interviewing lying or truth telling mock suspects (N=82). The trainees' strategies as well as liars' and truth tellers' counter-strategies were analyzed. Trained interviewers applied different strategies than did untrained. As a consequence of this, liars interviewed by trained interviewers were more inconsistent with the evidence compared to liars interviewed by untrained interviewers. Trained interviewers created and utilized the statement-evidence consistency cue, and obtained a considerably higher deception detection accuracy rate (85.4%) than untrained interviewers (56.1%).

Strategic use of evidence during police interviews: when training to detect deception works.

To be able to assess the veracity of statements offered by suspects, witnesses and alleged victims is of paramount importance in legal settings. The aim of this paper is to provide an initial piece of scientific support for the idea that psychologically informed mind-reading can improve people's ability to detect deception. To this end, a theoretical framework is sketched; a framework resting upon psychological notions from three domains: (a) the psychology of mind-reading, (b) the psychology of self-regulation, and (c) the psychology of guilt and innocence. Importantly, the term mind-reading is used in an instrumental (vs descriptive) manner, where the goal is to improve the ability to predict a person's behaviour (not to read the content of a person's mind). It is argued that the mind-reading process can be facilitated by theoretical and empirical work pertaining to ‘the psychology of guilt’ and ‘the psychology of innocence’. Using psychologically informed mind-reading, predictions of guilty an...

A new theoretical perspective on deception detection: On the psychology of instrumental mind-reading

Deception detection research has largely neglected an important aspect of many investigations, namely that there often exists evidence against a suspect. This study examined the potentials of timing of evidence disclosure as a deception detection tool. The main prediction was that observers (N = 116) would obtain higher accuracy rates if the evidence against the suspects (N = 58) was presented in a late rather than early stage of the interrogation. This prediction was based on the idea that late evidence disclosure would trigger lack of consistencies between the liars’ stories and the evidence; this could be used as a cue to deception. The main prediction received support. Late disclosure observers obtained an overall accuracy of 61.7%, compared to 42.9% of Early disclosure observers. Deceptive statements were identified with high accuracy (67.6%) in Late disclosure, indicating that the technique in this form is beneficial mainly for pinpointing lies.

/pdf/detecting-deception-via-strategic-disclosure-of-evidence-57imtmeu8i.pdf

Maria Hartwig

Papers

Why Do Lie-Catchers Fail? A Lens Model Meta-Analysis of Human Lie Judgments.

Guilty and innocent suspects’ strategies during police interrogations

Strategic use of evidence during police interviews: when training to detect deception works.

A new theoretical perspective on deception detection: On the psychology of instrumental mind-reading

Detecting deception via strategic disclosure of evidence.