Detecting deception during a consensual conversation can be a challenging job, especially if you have only limited time in which to assess what a potential suspect says and how he or she behaves.
But a psychology researcher and expert on interviewing strategies has identified certain key cues that can increase your chances of determining who’s lying to you and who’s telling the truth, even during brief encounters.
Dr. R. Edward Geiselman, a UCLA professor of forensic psychology who has authored more than 100 research papers and six books and has appeared as an expert witness in more than 300 trials, will soon begin teaching these deception-busting methods to officers in major U.S. cities where mass-transportation networks are considered prime targets for terrorist attacks and other crimes.
His presentations are part of a new instructional program being funded by the Department of Homeland Security’s Center for Domestic Preparedness, through the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and in concert with members of the LASD. While aimed primarily at officers protecting subways, buses, and light-rail facilities, Geiselman’s approach, with modest adaptation, can help you ferret out liars during traffic stops, field interviews, interrogations, and a wide variety of other law enforcement situations as well.
“Generally, training regimens spend a lot of time focused on how to detect a suspicious person in the first place, but they don’t offer much in terms of what to do once you see one — how you engage them, how you evaluate the story they generate,” Gieselman explains. “When discovering deception does get discussed, it’s usually in terms of body language. But in reality, certain vocal indicators are much more important and reliable.”
In an exclusive interview with Police1, Geiselman, who’s also an advisor to the Force Science Research Center and on the faculty for its popular Force Science Analysis certification course, elaborated on the techniques he’ll be teaching.
Initial Approach
In a mass transit setting, your attention may initially be drawn to a person who: is loitering…abruptly turns away when he spots you in uniform…appears to be conducting surveillance with photographs or notes...is wearing bulky clothing in warm weather...is sweating without hurrying...is carrying a package in an unusually protective manner...is traveling with other subjects who split up but remain in the area...or who otherwise seems to exhibit a profile commonly associated with suspicious activity.
Geiselman suggests that in establishing contact, you explain that you are there to conduct routine checks “that we do every day at this time.” This offers grounds for engaging a subject in conversation and asking questions without betraying that you are suspicious particularly of him.
“Unless or until the subject becomes uncooperative, a cordial, non-confrontational, information-gathering approach is best because it encourages him to talk more and therefore is more likely to maximize the number of verbal, vocal, and behavioral cues for you to analyze,” he says.
Travel Story
Ultimately, you want to elicit a “travel story” that becomes your testing ground for deception. Ask:
• “Where are you going today?”
• “Where did you come from?” or “What was your point of origination?”
• “When did you leave there?”
• “What route did you take to get here?”
“Above all, listen to the subject’s speech and observe his behavior,” Geiselman stresses. “Size up his baseline verbal abilities, speaking style, and alertness, because you need to look for changes in performance as the interview progresses.”
A common misconception is that most terrorists or other criminals find it extremely difficult to disguise their stress when intercepted by law enforcement. But Geiselman points out, “Research has shown that skilled deceivers who are without feelings of remorse are often able to coolly deliver a confabulated story, even without prior rehearsal.”
Your job is to penetrate that icy shell with the right psychological gambits.
Stress Infusion
One potential deception detector that Geiselman strongly favors is the “backward story” tactic, which “no one anticipates.” Once the suspect has given you his travel story (or, in a non-transit environment, some other version of events), get him to retrace his tale in reverse chronological order. Starting at the end, keep giving him prompts (“What did you do [or what happened] right before...”) to keep him regressing backward step by step to the beginning or even beyond.
“Telling a story backward is difficult for anybody,” Geiselman says, “but for people who are fabricating, it’s exceptionally hard because reverse-order recall requires considerable concentration and mental effort to maintain the logical flow of their stories. It disrupts their ability to sustain either a rehearsed or a spontaneous story. Unlike truthful people, fabricators can’t rely on a simple ‘read out’ of their memories to generate their statements.”
While they’re trying to respond to your prompts, “force continuous eye contact,” Geiselman recommends. In normal Q&A or casual conversation, “deceitful subjects often will maintain steady eye contact with you in hopes you’ll equate this with truthfulness, while in fact they may be monitoring you to see if you’re buying their story,” he says. “But under the super concentration necessary for reverse recall, they’ll often vacillate between watching your reactions and turning away to think about their next answer.
“When the suspect averts his gaze, you should maneuver your face to regain eye contact. Research has shown that this can increase the subject’s ‘cognitive load,’ his mental stress.” And that is when the indicators of deception that you’re looking for are most likely to surface.
Suspicious Reactions
Research by Geiselman and others has shown that fabricated stories about alleged personal experiences often contain recognizable signs that are less likely to be present when a subject is telling the truth. “Deceptive persons have to base their stories on their imaginations because they have no actual perceptual experiences to draw on,” Geiselman says. “As a result, their accounts often exhibit different characteristics than those generated by truthful persons.
“These indicators include a small set of verbal, vocal, and behavioral elements that are found to be most reliable across several studies. They’re not perfect clues to deception because they’re not infallible. But they should be considered promising red flags, alerting you that further suspicion and appropriate cautionary action is warranted.”
For Example
Bare-bones story — “Deceptive persons tend to offer abbreviated statements with few details and elaborations. Their stories are typically skimpy on time references, on visual descriptions of people, places, and objects, and on comments about interactions with others. They offer you only the ‘highlights,’ while truthful people tend to elaborate on their stories spontaneously, embedding them with descriptions of interactions and images, specific references to times and places, and other details that are secondary to the travel itself but reflect memory of sensory details they actually experienced.”
Explanations and rationalizations — When deceitful subjects do elaborate, their statements often tend to be justifications or rationalizations for their circumstances or actions. They typically offer explanations for why things happened or are the way they are, without your asking. For instance: “I had to carry all this stuff with me today because…” or “I was standing there because….” “It’s as if they’re trying to convince you that something is truthful by providing justification for it, and they may also be trying to convince themselves that their story is holding together logically,” Geiselman says.
Buying time — Deceptive people will often try to gain time to think by repeating your question before offering an answer or by posing a question of their own in response to yours. “Most truthful people do not feel a need to buy time for thought,” Geiselman observes.
Hesitant, labored speech — “There tends to be a certain fluid flow to a truthful story,” Geiselman says. “But a fabricator’s speech often alternates between slow moments and accelerated bursts. He slows down to think hard about his lie then speeds up like he’s making up for lost time. Deceptive persons expend much more effort in hyper-monitoring their fabrications, and this burden is reflected in frequent hesitations and fragmented sentences, along with an elevation in pitch in many cases.” Also, Geiselman has found, truthful subjects have no reluctance to acknowledge limitations in their memories or to correct errors when they misspeak, while liars tend to bull ahead with their stories in an effort to appear polished and perhaps to shorten the interview. They usually will claim a memory failure only when cornered with an inconsistency.
Physical traits — Although Geiselman believes that physical indicators are generally less reliable than vocal ones, there are some he recommends watching for. “Research shows that deceptive persons often will press their lips together in a false show of frankness during their fabricated stories,” he says. “They also tend to gesture toward their body or to not gesture at all. This can be subject to cultural influences, but the thinking is that truth-tellers tend to use outward hand and arm gestures toward the external world where their events actually occurred, while the deceptive subject’s focus is subconsciously inward where his story is being created.”
The Deception Scale
So is the subject you’re talking to blowing smoke...or giving you the straight skinny?
Geiselman suggests this rating system:
“If someone who has already attracted your attention exhibits clear signs of three or more indicators of deception, your level of suspicion should be HIGH. Two indicators warrants MEDIUM suspicion. One or none suggests a LOW chance of deception.
“But remember: Detecting deception is difficult. It takes keen observational skills that are well-practiced. At best, you are bound to make some mistakes. But when you succeed, particularly in a mass-transit venue, you could be responsible for saving scores of lives.”
Dr. Geiselman is co-author of the book Memory Enhancing Techniques for Investigative Interviewing: The Cognitive Interview. For additional techniques you can use as a “curbstone lie-detector,” also see Chapter 5 of the best-selling book, Tactics for Criminal Patrol, available from Calibre Press.
