Small Cells of Suspects: Eliciting Cues to Deception by Strategic Interviewing

摘要

Investigators often have to deal with small groups of suspects, and this is true both for criminal cases and for suspected terrorist cases. There is, however, very little research examining the effectiveness of different interview techniques when facing cells of suspects. In order to remedy this shortcoming, we examined the extent to which three interviewing techniques elicited cues to deception from small groups of suspects. In one technique, the evidence was disclosed early in the interview (early evidence); in another, the evidence was disclosed late using the Strategic use of evidence technique (SUE-basic); and in the third technique, the evidence was disclosed late and with an increased strength and precision (SUE-incremental). We used a mock-theft scenario with 126 participants randomly allocated to one of six conditions: guilty or innocent suspects interrogated with one of the three disclosure tactics. The SUE-incremental proved to be the most effective technique, resulting in significant differences between guilty and innocent suspects for all three cues examined: statement-evidence inconsistency, within-statement inconsistency, and within-group inconsistency. Based on the findings, we argue that the SUE technique is effective also for eliciting cues to deception when used for small groups of suspects. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.