Improving Professional Observers' Veracity Judgements by Tactical Interviewing

Sandham, Alexandra ORCID: 0000-0002-8563-0751, Dando, C. J. ORCID: 0000-0003-3343-3382, Bull, R ORCID: 0000-0001-6065-467X and Ormerod, T.C. ORCID: 0000-0002-9180-1326 (2022) Improving Professional Observers' Veracity Judgements by Tactical Interviewing. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 37. pp. 279-287. doi:10.1007/s11896-020-09391-1

Preview

Text (Peer-reviewed version) 8508-Sandham-(2020)-Improving professional-observers-veracity-judgments.pdf - Accepted Version Available under License All Rights Reserved. Download (224kB) | Preview

Abstract

Understanding whether a person of interest is being truthful during an investigative interview is a constant challenge and is of concern to numerous criminal justice professionals, most of whom are not involved in conducting the interview itself. Here we investigated police observers’ veracity detection performance having viewed interviews with truthtellers and deceivers using either the Tactical Use of Evidence (TUE), Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE) or a Control technique. Thirty serving police officers participated as post interview observers and each viewed 12 interviews in a counterbalanced order. After each interview the officer made a veracity judgment. Overall, untrained police observers were significantly more accurate (68%) when making veracity judgments post TUE interviews, whereas for both SUE and Control performance was around chance (51% and 48%, respectively). Veracity performance for liars and truthtellers revealed a similar pattern of results (67% liars; 70% truthtellers) in the TUE condition. These results lend further support to the psychological literature highlighting the importance of how and when to reveal evidence or any other relevant event information during an investigative interview for ‘outing’ deceivers as well as allowing truthtellers early opportunities to demonstrate their innocence.

Item Type:	Article
Article Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Police observers; Tactical interviewing; Detecting deception; REF2021
Related URLs:	Repository
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology. > HV6001 Criminology H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology. > HV7231 Criminal justice administration > HV7551 Police. Detectives. Constabulary.
Divisions:	Schools and Research Institutes > School of Education and Science
Research Priority Areas:	Culture, Continuity, and Transformation
Depositing User:	Alex Sandham
Date Deposited:	07 Jul 2020 08:54
Last Modified:	20 Jun 2024 13:21
URI:	https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/8508

University Staff: Request a correction | Repository Editors: Update this record