Abstract
Evaluating truthfulness and detecting deception is a capstone skill of criminal justice professionals, and researchers have long examined nonverbal cues to aid in such determinations. This paper examines the notion that testing clusters of nonverbal behaviors is a more fruitful way of making such determinations than single, specific behaviors. Participants from four ethnic groups participated in a mock crime and either told the truth or lied in an investigative interview. Fourteen nonverbal behaviors of the interviewees were coded from the interviews; differences in the behaviors were tested according to type of question and veracity condition. Different types of questions produced different nonverbal reactions. Clusters of nonverbal behaviors differentiated truth tellers from liars, and the specific clusters were moderated by question. Accuracy rates ranged from 62.6 to 72.5% and were above deception detection accuracy rates for humans and random data. These findings have implications for practitioners as well as future research and theory.
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Notes
Consistent with many other writers in this area (e.g., Hirschberg 2002; Scott and McGettigan 2016), we consider vocal characteristics, including vocal pitch (tone), rate, intensity, response latencies, response durations, and the like, as a subset of NVB. Contrastingly, verbal behavior focuses on the messages associated with verbal content (words).
In fact, the same argument could be made for verbal cues to lying. Research has demonstrated that a number of verbal cues—both related to content and to grammatical and linguistic features of speech—can differentiate truth tellers from liars. But this literature also shows that no one single, specific verbal cue can differentiate truth tellers and liars reliably; instead, this literature has shown that multiple, different types of verbal cues can differentiate truths and lies (Deeb et al. 2017; Hwang et al. 2016; Matsumoto et al. 2015a, b; Vrij et al. 2011), akin to clusters of NVB.
Sample sizes for specific analyses reported below differed because of differing missing cases occurring because of technical issues in the various methods of data extractions.
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This work was funded in part by the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group contract J-FBI-12-197 awarded to Humintell LLC. Statements of fact, opinion, and analysis in the paper are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the FBI or the US Government.
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Both authors are employees of Humintell, to whom the grant was awarded to support this project.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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Matsumoto, D., Hwang, H.C. Clusters of Nonverbal Behaviors Differ According to Type of Question and Veracity in Investigative Interviews in a Mock Crime Context. J Police Crim Psych 33, 302–315 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-017-9250-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-017-9250-0