The Devil's Advocate approach: An interview technique for assessing consistency among deceptive and truth-telling pairs of suspects

摘要

PurposeThe aim of this study was to assess statement consistency in pairs of deceptive and truth-telling suspects when the Devil's Advocate approach is implemented. This approach involves asking suspects an opinion-eliciting' question for arguments that support their opinions followed by a devil's advocate' question to elicit opposing arguments. On the basis of the confirmation bias and impression management literatures, we predicted that truth-telling pairs would provide more consistent arguments in response to the opinion-eliciting question than to the devil's advocate question. Deceptive pairs were expected to be equally consistent with each other in response to both questions.