Citation

Granhag PA, Strömwall LA. Leg. Crim. Psychol. 2001; 6(1): 85-101.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2001, British Psychological Society, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1348/135532501168217

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Purpose. Suspects are often subjected to multiple interrogations. Research on deception has neglected this fact. To remedy this shortcoming this study was conducted focusing on how repeated interrogations affect deception detection performance. In addition, the previous finding that interrogators interacting face to face tend to be more credulous towards suspects than observers watching the same suspects on video was tested.Method. After seeing a staged event, 12 lying and 12 truth-telling witnesses were interrogated three times over a period of 11 days. After the final interrogation the veracity of each witness was assessed by his or her interrogator and by six observers who had seen the interrogations on video. In all, 144 observers were used and all participants were undergraduate students.Results. The main findings were that (1) both interrogators and observers were poor at discerning truth-tellers and liars; (2) observers who made veracity judgments after seeing one interrogation performed in line with observers who had seen three interrogations; (3) observers who assessed veracity after seeing one interrogation and then, again, after watching the additional two, significantly increased their performance; and (4) the interrogators showed a very pronounced truth bias.Conclusions. The results suggest that interrogators should be careful not to hold a too lenient attitude towards suspects. Importantly, the study also shows that the number of veracity assessments made is more related to deception detection performance than is the number of interrogations a judge presides over. The finding that lie-catchers' performance is affected by both how sequential information is presented and integrated has important psycho-legal implications.

Language: en