sample?
Tested 99 Kent Police Officers (24 females, 75 males; of these
there were 78 detectives, 4 traffic officers, 8 trainers and 9
uniformed response officers)
aim?
their ability to distinguish truth from lies in a police interview with a suspect.
method?
They saw video clips taken from 14 police interviews and
were asked to judge if the suspect was telling the truth or
lying in each one and how confident they were in their
judgement (on a 7-point scale).
They were also asked to explain what cues they had used to
detect the lies.
results?
The Police Officers’ ability to detect lies and the truth
were significantly better than chance (lie accuracy
66.2%, truth accuracy 63.6%)
Experience in interviewing correlated with truth
accuracy and lie accuracy
The cues that led to better accuracy were
contradictions in the story rather than those related
to body language such as gaze aversion (i.e. looking
away) or fidgeting.
