Wiping under nose with finger
Aggression
Fingers formed in steeple shape
Superiority
Mouth falls open
Boredom or unsure of self
Flared nostrils
Aggression, critical attitude
Tongue flicking teeth
Sexually aggressive
Biting lips
Self-depreciation
Hands held behind head
Confident, superiority
Male running fingers through his hair
Uncertainty
Female playing with her hair
Flirtation
Folding hands deep in lap
Defense against rejection
Self-scratching, picking, squeezing
Aggression, hostility
Woman exposing palm to man
Flirtation
Rubbing objects
Reassurance, sensuousness
Fist clenching or pounding
Aggression
Hand covering face
Protection, concealment
Covering eyes with hand
Fear or shame
Truthfulness
Truthfulness, also known as honesty and sincerity, is signaled by an acute
memory, a perceptive recounting of facts, and a flowing narration. Truthful
interviewees display a consistent recollection of details and attempt to dig up
related specifics, often offering more information than they are asked for.
With encouragement, they remember facts they thought they had forgotten.
They will allow the interviewer to see their mental wheels moving in search
of additional details. With the truthful, you might witness a furrowed brow,
squinted eyes, and a contemplative silence. They are open and relaxed in
their manner of speech, though they may be somewhat uneasy. In addition,
they clearly explain the sequence of events, wanting to be correct.
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The Art of Investigative Interviewing
The fundamentals of human personality are needs, emotions, thinking,
and the ability to relate thoughts and feelings. 7 Our actions are a result and composite of all of these elements. But most of all, it is the satisfaction of essential and predictable needs that motivates every type of human behavior. Indi-
viduals try to satisfy their needs by maintaining physical comfort, avoiding the unsafe, attempting to gain understanding, detesting anonymity, desiring to be
free from boredom, fearing the unknown, and hating disorder. Because social
needs are comparatively unsatisfied, they have become a primary motivator
for behavior. Interviewees desperately seek approval and reassurance that they
are in control. Interviewees who feel threatened, inferior, or ridiculous will
try to increase feelings of security, acceptance, and self-regard. Everyone
experiences feelings of inferiority from time to time. You may succeed in
gaining the cooperation of interviewees if you nourish them with feelings
of security, friendship, and dignity and encourage them as they strive to satisfy their needs.
As we strive, directly or indirectly, to satisfy our needs, we have urges to
behave in ways that will help or hinder our striving. Complications may
develop as we seek to satisfy our needs. Either we modify our behavior to over-
come the obstacles that are blocking the satisfaction of our needs, or we become frustrated at our failures. Frustration may provoke the emotional reactions of
aggression, regression, and fixation as well as assorted defense mechanisms.
Refusal to Cooperate
At times, your efforts to gain the interviewee’s cooperation will be unsuccessful.
Interviewees might refuse to become involved in an investigation because they
fear callous or indifferent treatment from legal authorities, fear of reprisal from the guilty party or others, inconvenience and financial loss, and confusion over legal proceedings. To some interviewees, court appearances entail an unnecessary burden on their time and energy. Whatever the interviewee’s reason for
not being cooperative, it is the skillful investigator that can build rapport with the person to get him to talk about things he was prepared not to discuss.
It is not unusual for the deceptive person to exhibit symptoms of physical
shock while answering questions. These symptoms include lightheadedness
and numbness in the extremities due to reduced blood circulation. These
7 Maslow & Lowery, 1998, Changing Minds.org “The hierarchical effect”. March 17, 2013.
Deception and the Interview
37
physiological symptoms may be a response to the interviewee’s feeling of
being trapped and not knowing what to do. When they’re lying, inter-
viewees may also exhibit physiological cues such as burping, sweating, cry-
ing, and appearing to be in a state of turmoil. Truthful individuals generally
do not undergo such stress when questioned, particularly when the inter-
viewer remains calm and restrained.
Psychological Motives for Deception
Interviewees are deceptive for a variety of motives, frequently multiple
motives. For some, the interview is an exercise in survival. The truth might
result in consequences that would cause the interviewee shame, embarrass-
ment, and punishment. How interviewees evaluate the hazards in any given
interview is up to the individual being questioned and depends on what they
have to hide. For other people, the interview is a game. The punishment and
shame associated with getting caught are not as important as matching wits
with the investigator. They make it their challenge to outsmart the inter-
viewer. Much more could be said regarding the psychological motives
behind deception, but in one form or another, these motives are woven
among the interviewee’s efforts to satisfy basic human needs.
The Pathological Liar
Pathological liars habitually tell lies so exaggerated or bizarre that they are
suggestive of mental disorder. They fabricate when it would be simpler
and more convenient to tell the truth. Their stories are often complex ratio-
nalizations leading to self-vindication. Most likely, pathological liars have
been fabricating stories since childhood, so they might be so good at lying
that they actually believe those lies. As interviewees, pathological liars are
quite convincing when they say they did not just say what they actually
did say. Most have the ability to refute your recall and notes pertaining to
their comments. When faced with what they said only moments before,
they will say something like, “Oh, no, I didn’t say that!” This is when
you have a reality check with yourself to see if you have lost your grip
on the here and now. You know that you know what they said, but you
check your notes to be sure. This is not the time to enter into an I-said-
you-said game with the interviewee. Be strong and restrain your inclination
to do battle, because you will lose in the end. After all, if you want infor-
mation you can use, you can’t win such a battle and expect friendly
cooperation.
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The Art of Investigative Interviewing
The Psychopathic Personality
The psychopathic personality develops along asocial and amoral lines and
cannot adjust to society’s standards. The psychopath is supremely selfish, liv-
ing only for immediate gratification and without rega
rd for the conse-
quences. Normal individuals often sacrifice for the possibilities of the
future and show a willingness to defer certain gratifications. The psychopath
is always able to differentiate between right and wrong and usually is well
acquainted with the requirements of society and religion, but he is absolutely
unwilling to be governed by these laws. In fact, he may say that they do not
concern him. The only interest he has in laws is to see that he is not caught
when he violates them and, if he is caught, to try to secure, by some trick, a
minimum punishment. Thus, one of the symptoms of being a psychopath is
a complete selfishness that manifests itself in every act of the person. The
only one the psychopath thinks of—in fact, the only individual that he
completely loves—is himself, and he is surprisingly hardened to the rest
of the world, including the members of his own family.
There is no satisfactory treatment for a psychopathic personality. Psychi-
atrists have so far been unable to do any good once the person’s psychopathic
behavior pattern has been established. Neither a long term in prison nor
restraint in a psychiatric hospital can affect the conduct of psychopaths.
Their motivation is to outsmart the investigator.
Rationalization
Interviewees, like all of us, act in accordance with their own individual, rational, reasoning powers. They protect themselves with rationalizations when
they hold hidden images; thus they use rationalization to justify their behavior.
Everyone wants to feel capable, normal, and worthwhile compared to
others. Few people are self-confident enough to be completely indifferent
to insults and criticisms. People maintain their self-image by conforming
to social pressure, which can produce feelings of conflict and guilt when
group behavior contradicts the dictates of their own conscience. Hence
interviewees will rationalize their actions, not wanting to expose themselves.
By accepting their rationalizations, you can help interviewees feel more con-
fident and lessen their feelings of self-doubt. As a result, you might be more
likely to gain their cooperation.
You can encourage interviewees to cooperate through active listening,
building rapport, asking the right questions, and being prepared. Try to
Deception and the Interview
39
eliminate negative aspects of the situation that might show signs of disgust or
disappointment, to reduce the interviewee’s reluctance to cooperate. You
might suggest that the interviewee’s action (or lack of action) is not so
unique after all and that many people would take the same action if they
found themselves in those circumstances. Although you are diminishing
the significance of her acts, you are not changing the interviewee’s overall
responsibility for her actions nor overlooking the effect her actions had on
others. Your goal is always to allow for the free flow of accurate information.
You might need to help some interviewees rationalize their cooperation
with the investigation. Cooperation may cause them to lose face if it cannot
be justified. If low self-esteem is the price of assisting with an investigation, some interviewees will refuse.
Projection
Humans try to appear reasonable to themselves and to others by doing what
is proper and acceptable. Some people use the defense mechanism of pro-
jection to shift onto others the responsibilities that they themselves have not
adequately handled. When they cannot live up to expectations, they blame
other people or the situation itself for their behavior. They use projection to
make their behavior understandable and socially acceptable. Thus, it is
always someone else’s fault. Often interviewees project their blame onto
others in their effort to save face.
Skilled interviewers use deductive logic when reaching a conclusion about
the interviewee’s truthfulness. When interviewing, you will need to consider
the subject’s verbal and nonverbal behavior equally. The interviewer’s tactics
are based on generalizations accumulated from personal experience.
Concluding That There Has Been Deception
Concluding that your interviewee was truthful or deceptive will be based on
all parts of the interview, verbal and nonverbal, and the personal experience
of the interviewer. The interviewer will weigh the totality of the interview
and look for a baseline to help indicate truthfulness or deception.
REVIEW QUESTIONS
1. Does the concept of deception have the same meaning to everyone
throughout the world?
2. Define the terms esteem and self-esteem.
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The Art of Investigative Interviewing
3. How do interviewees try to protect their self-image?
4. What is the relationship between needs and human behavior?
5. What can you do to influence the interviewee’s behavior?
6. Why would a person resist answering your questions about someone
else?
7. How does an understanding of the interviewee’s needs help you
achieve your objective?
8. What is the best response to an interviewee’s anger?
9. What are the four tests of interviewee credibility?
10. How do the truthful typically answer questions?
11. What is deception?
12. Why are convincing liars difficult to detect?
13. Identify several verbal, nonverbal, and physiological signs of
deception.
14. What is the significance of an interviewee’s responding with objec-
tions rather than denials?
15. How does a deceptive person’s eye contact differ from that of the
truthful person?
16. List three key characteristics of a psychopath.
17. Contrast rationalization and projection.
18. Why do people rationalize?
19. Why do pathological liars lie? Why do other people lie?
20. On what should you base your conclusion as to an interviewee’s
truthfulness?
5
CHAPTER
Evidence
Competent evidence is evidence that has been properly collected, identified,
filed, and continuously secured.
All clues and all traces of evidence are valuable in solving a crime. Even
small bits of evidence may help prove someone’s guilt, whereas limiting the
search for evidence may lead to charging the wrong person with the crime.
Therefore, the search for guilt or innocence arises out of the examination of
all available evidence.
REAL, DOCUMENTARY, AND TESTIMONIAL EVIDENCE
There are three basic types of evidence. Real and documentary evidence make
up about 20 percent of all evidence presented in courts of law; testimonial
evidence accounts for the remaining 80 percent.
Real, or physical, evidence is something you can photograph, chart, put
your hands on, pick up, or store. It consists of tangible items such as a bullet, a tire track, a key, a cell phone, or a fingerprint. Real evidence is usually
found at a crime scene and pertains to the way the crime was committed
and who is culpable. It is not based on the memory of the interviewee, unless
&
nbsp; the evidence was found because a witness recalled where the shooter threw
the gun or where the robber touched the bank counter. Such evidence is
often volatile, fragile, and fleeting. It requires expert handling if it is to be useful in court.
In handling real evidence, the investigator must maintain a chain of cus-
tody, which records how the evidence was handled, to prove that it was not
contaminated in any way. Documentary evidence, on the other hand, is usually
not found at a crime scene. Especially with crimes of passion, such as murder
and assault, documentary evidence is collected after the crime scene inves-
tigation has been completed. Documentary evidence often consists of a
record or an account that will help investigators prove or disprove some fact.
It includes such things as credit card receipts, hotel registers, and business
records or computers. Like real evidence, documentary evidence has sub-
stance. One difference is that real evidence is created as a byproduct of a
crime, whereas documentary evidence is often mandated or regulated in
some way, such as records maintained in the normal course of business.
41
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The Art of Investigative Interviewing
In many criminal investigations such as cases of fraud or embezzlement,
documents are the main form of evidence. Investigators of such white-collar
crimes make a special effort to legally and quickly collect documents to pre-
serve them as evidence. Often search warrants or subpoenas are required to
obtain stored business documents.
The part played by documentary evidence in an investigation is based on
what the document contains. For example, data entered into a diary by a
victim, a witness, or a suspect or a text message received on an iPhone could
be vital corroboration of other evidence discovered in other ways through
such data contained in telephone records, receipts, and so forth. Motel
records might verify that a person was a guest at a particular motel on a par-
ticular day, as stated on credit card records. Other documents might confirm
that a person was at a certain place at a particular time or was engaged in a
specified activity.
Testimonial evidence generally comes from interviews of victims, wit-