1. Detecting Validity and Deception in Interviews and Statements
Metacentre.net

2. Politics of Legitimacy - you are far better at detecting deception than the experts are telling you and they are far less capable than you being led to believe.

3. Myths -
You are 53% accurate in the field
There are wizards who have 80% +accuracy
An articulated method achieves a 90% accuracy FACS

4. Meet Elvis: The virtual border official who knows if you're lying
By Tim Hume, CNN
updated 6:54 AM EDT, Wed August 15, 2012
(CNN) -- A lie-detecting virtual border official nicknamed "Elvis" is the latest high-tech approach to securing borders in the United States.
Developed by University of Arizona researchers in collaboration with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the computer is known as the Automated Virtual Agent for Truth Assessments in Real-Time -- or AVATAR -- kiosk.
It uses sensors to screen passengers for unusual physiological responses to questioning -- which can indicate a subject is lying.
"What we're looking for is changes in human physiology," said Doug Derrick, a member of the University of Arizona team behind the project.
"We've had great success in reliably detecting these anomalies -- things that people can't really detect."

5. Eliciting cues to deception and truth: What Matters are the Questions Asked.

6. Deception is an attempt to distort perception
Vrjit defines deception as “ a successful or unsuccessful deliberate attempt , without forewarning, to create in another a belief which the communicator considers to be untrue.” (Vrjit, DL&D,p6)
Appearance, sound, touch, words
self-deception is often beyond awareness and begs the question “Is it deliberate?”

7. Deception is a mechanism of self-protection and often indistinguishable from essential editing
Deception/sincerity is evident in two forms - physiologically and in language.
To perceive deception/sincerity in language the interviewer needs to analyze the statement.
To perceive deception/sincerity physiologically the interviewer needs to experience the subject.

8. Detection
To detect deception/sincerity in the statement we need to compare the statement with itself and with other evidence.
To detect deceptive/sincere non-verbal behaviour we need to compare the subject with themselves.
Within the statement we look for consistency, contradiction, omissions and linguistic indicators of deception.
Comparing the statement to other information we look for consistency, contradiction, slips of the tongue and logical congruence.
With non-verbal behaviour we compare expressions of different internal states.

9. Inaccurate detection You don’t want to know
There is no typical deceptive behaviour
Differences between deceptive and truthful behaviour is unclear, (omissions)
Intense scrutiny is rude
Truth bias
Nervousness is misread
Individual differences
International scientific studies indicate that we are not good at detecting deception.(53% accuracy). Accuracy of detecting truthfulness or deception through comparisons of psychological research to the general population is dubious since virtually all the research methods fragment the intuitive process and environmental conditions normally found in social interaction. It is like dissecting the frog and concluding the frog can’t jump. Or evaluating Beethoven’s 5th by studying the sound of each instrument consecutively. Intuition is an orchestration of simultaneous unconscious/conscious behaviours which rely on conducive external factors to work effectively. If either the behaviours or conditions are fragmented the detecting skills are compromised.

10. Physiological Symptoms can be detected in three ways
*FACS - Facial Action Coding System - detects facial muscular tension to reveal minute ‘leaks’ of emotional expression. Of principle interest are fear and contempt which accompany deceptive activity.

11. Can be indicative of internal conflict about what is being said
Non-verbal behaviour
Can be indicative of internal conflict about what is being said
Requires intense and unbroken attention made difficult by note taking and reading prepared questions.
We need to be careful interpreting emotion behind the mask and what it means
The less evidence the interviewer has prior to the interview the more s/he will rely on non-verbal behaviour at the outset and conversely, the more evidence the more the interviewer will focus on what is said rather than non-verbal expression or how the story is constructed in the initial stages.

12. Expectations
General interviewer better at detecting truthful than deceptive behaviour.
Investigative Interviewer better at detecting deceptive than truthful.
Pre-knowledge, (evidence) will bias the interviewer to ignore non-verbal. behaviour and focus on content, (what is said).
Less pre-knowledge will lead to focus more on non-verbal and less on content.

13. The OPTICS principle Observation Perceived risk Time Interaction
Context
Sophistication

14. Observation Accessing Cues Relaxed Stressed Breathing From the abdomen
Top of the chest
Shallow / rapid jerky / sighing
Facial
Jowls sag / cheeks relax/ colour is even and more robust
Raised or furrowed eyebrows / cheeks tighten / less colour – blanched / flared nostrils
Mouth
Lips fuller / deeper colour
Lips narrow / tight / whitish-purple / swallowing / licking / clicking tongue
Skin moisture
Smooth / dry
Cold / moist / clammy
Pulse
Slow / deep / even
Rapid / shallow
Body posture
Relaxed / open
Closed / rigid
Voice
Varying pitch / soft / even tone and rate
Weak or loud / high pitch / rapid / strained / throat clearing / stuttering
Someone who is attempting to conceal stress will correct their responses within 1/25th of a second.*( Aldert Vrjit, 2000, Detecting Lies and Deceit, p215) When asking critical issue question don’t blink.
Lower half of the face more deceptive - false smile

15. Observation Eye Movement
Visual
Auditory
sounds
digital processing
Kinesthetic
sensations emotions taste smell

16. Perceived Risk The greater the consequences the greater the stress.
As stress elevates, the more apparent are physiological symptoms.
How the subject perceives their risk will determine the degree of expressed stress.
What do you perceive the subject has to lose or gain or both?
Does the subject perceive their risk the same as you do?
Do they expect the worst?
Social Psychology fails to distinguish varying degrees of confidence which effect the robustness of expression.
Ekman and others failed to measure how much risk/stress/expression individual deceivers experienced during experiments. If a deceiver story is true but deceptive by omission the degree of stress will likely be less because deception by omission may reduce the teller’s stress because they believe omitting is not lying.

17. Perceived risk is affected by confidence
The story is:
-true but with omissions.
-part true, part false.
-an outright lie.
False stories are rarely entirely fabricated nor true stories a complete articulation of internal memories.
Most deceptive statements are true.
Research has never been able to make these distinctions clearly. Since stress levels will vary based on confidence in one’s ability to assert they are being truthful, neither subject nor control groups will provide consistent baseline stress indicators. Even a bipolar question/answer ”Did you do it?” which only calls for a yes or no will be effected by how the subject cognitively rationalizes their answer internally.

18. Perceived risk
Do you want to elevate stress? Perhaps to see how the subject looks before focusing on critical issue questions. To shake the subject’s confidence.
Do you want to decrease stress to establish rapport and differentiate the meaning of general anxiety from specific concerns?
Does the victim or witness fear retaliation? Is their fear realistic?
The confidence factor. Psychologists have not distinguished between lies and deception. (Vrjt) (two models, bipolar or creative)Most stories are truthful but with calculated omissions. The stress factor will be directly related to the cleverness of the deception. If the deceiver has constructed a response which is not vulnerable to contradiction with other evidence and/or doesn’t contain a direct lie the deceiver will be less concerned about confrontation and therefore be less threatened and less stressed.

19. Time
The interviewer needs to accelerate the process of establishing familiarity before assigning significance to behaviours.
The interviewer needs to spend sufficient time with the subject to vary the subject’s stress level before asking critical issue questions.
(compare appearance while eliciting different internal states)
Observers are initially more accurate than observer/interviewers. Probing works in favour of the deceiver.
However familiarity improves accuracy predicting deception, (Miller, Mongeau and Sleight, % correct)

20. Interaction
An interview is a process of interaction where each response affects the next response generating a unique path that cannot be entirely anticipated. The dynamic interaction and lack of predictability does not allow either party to completely control their physiological revelations which results in general anxiety.
Both the interviewer and subject’s strategies will effect the interaction. Refer to qualities of a good deceiver. The more you disrupt the expectations of the deceiver the more stress will be generated.

21. Context
Every interview brings together unique individuals, circumstances and environment.
The meaning of expression can be confidently approximated only if the response clearly relates to the context.
Expressive and socially self-conscious are better non-verbal deceivers than introverts and socially anxious people who are perceived as less credible. Vrjt 2000 Detecting Lies and Deceit p87
Synchrony, mutual influence,reciprocity p425 Dyadic Data Analysis Kenny
Depaulo, B. M., & Kashy, D. A., (1998), Everyday lies in close and casual relationships.
The meaning of non-verbal behaviour can only be approximated in the context of the subject of focus. Even then if the deceiver buffers with cognitive rationalization stress will be diminished

22. The dilemma for the investigator is that if s/he works within an ethical framework s/he will not function at as high logical levels as the deceiver and will have less ingenuity since thinking within ethical boundaries limits possible choices at any given moment in the interview.

23. Most reliable Non-verbal cues to deception
Speak in higher pitch
Fewer arm/hand/finger movements*
Fewer illustrations*
Take longer pauses
Fewer legs/feet movement*
* Contrary to beliefs of professional investigators (Vrjt 2000 DL&D)
Prisoners are more accurate in their perceptions of non-verbal cues to deception.
Gender difference - women better at reading non-verbals but no better at detecting deception?

24. Detect non-verbal behaviour
Look for both congruence and mixed messages
Deceptive subjects can be confronted with contradictions

25. Post-interview analysis
Requires accurate documentation
Audio-visual or audio recording preferred
Transcriptions should include all mistakes, pauses and incoherences.

26. Britney Spears reversed
Backmasking
Britney Spears reversed

27. Patternicity is the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise.
Apophenia is the experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data
Pareidolia a form of apophenia such as seeing the man in the moon or hearing messages in reversed recordings.
Pareidollia is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant, a form of apophenia. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hearing hidden messages in musical recordings when played in reverse.
Apophenia "unmotivated seeing of connections" accompanied by a "specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness", but it has come to represent the human tendency to seek patterns in random information in general (such as with gambling), paranormal phenomena, and religion.[3]

28. We need to recognize patterns instantly to survive.

29. The problem is our need to make sense of things quickly leads us to make sense of a lot of things that don’t make sense. A secondary problem is that once we have made a pattern out our senses can pick up the pattern has a tendency to persist. This makes sense because once you have identified a lion in the grass you will be quicker at identifying the next one,(if you survive).

30. I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid! Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? Yaeh, and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt.
This ability to make patterns out of symbols is equally useful giving us language. The illusion is that since language is a form of communication the meaning of a group of symbols is fixed and common. But we all know that reading a story will result in multiple interpretations. The problem with language is that once each of us has put the symbols, words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs together our subjective patterns of understanding become fixed pattern and we have trouble seeing the tree in forest, the lion in the grass. I call this the apophenic trap.
We are predisposed to find stories meaningful, we also are compelled to make them make sense. This is what I refer to as semantic rescuing. If you have a truth bias for instance you will make the story work for the writer, if you are a skeptic you find how the story doesn’t work. These tendencies cause us to read into the story rather than read from the story.

31. Preparation Pitfalls
Similar cases bias expectations - the more experience the more likely you engage in:
Premature closure - selective attention to what “fits” and disregard inconsistent information.
Confirmation bias - type of question filters and moulds answers.
Defensive avoidance - material that is inconsistent is ignored or disregarded.

33. The Statement Profiler for Dummies
All statements are edited versions of fragments of experience. Ask statement:
1) Does this story tell you when, where, who, what, how, and why without prompting?
2) What is important that has been left out?
3) What do the words say?
4) Does the story make sense? Reconstruct
5) Imagine you were telling the story. How would you tell it?

34. Weighting
Calculate the number of words or lines to describe sections of the statement:
1. Prologue: leading up to event
2. Critical issue: event itself
3. Epilogue: repercussions

35. Weighting factor is more useful the less the investigator interrupts the subject’s version

36. Prologue
Should give verifiable information such as time, date, location.
If it contains more lines than epilogue, 85% likelihood it is deceptive.
More than 33% of statement likely deceptive.

37. I got to work at 8:00. Fred was on me right from the start like he’d been all week. He told me to get a car into bay 3. It was buried behind two other vehicles. The lot was full. It took me a 1/2 hour to get the car on the lift. He came at me and started shouting at me. I told him where to get off. We walked toward each other yelling. I had an extension cord in one hand and an air drill in the other. After I got the car off the lift the manager came in and told me to go home. He didn’t tell me a reason and I still don’t know why I was fired.

38. Following your intuition proves to be very accurate!
Going With Your Gut Feeling: Intuition Alone Can Guide Right Choice, Study Suggests
In a behavioral experiment, Prof. Marius Usher of Tel Aviv University’s School of Psychological Sciences and his fellow researchers found that intuition was a surprisingly powerful and accurate tool. When forced to choose between two options based on instinct alone, the participants made the right call up to 90 percent of the time.
The participants were able to calculate the different values accurately at exceptional speed, the researchers found. They were also able to process large amounts of data — in fact, their accuracy increased in relation to the amount of data they were presented. When shown six pairs of numbers, for example, the participants chose accurately 65 percent of the time. But when they were shown 24 pairs, the accuracy rate grew to about 90 percent.

39. MetaCentre Consulting