Contextualizing Interviews to Detect Verbal Cues to Truths and Deceit

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Background

At the turn of the 21st century, deception researchers became increasingly interested in examining lie detection in forensic interviews. This interest was driven by the applied nature of the field and by a need to communicate the research output to end users (i.e., practitioners). However, the research is at a distance from advancing practice as it has repeatedly shown that lie detection is context-dependent with different findings emerging across different interview settings, lie types, cultures, etc. These findings suggest that deceptive and truthful behaviors change across contexts, and thus contextual factors should be considered when detecting lies.

Research focus on forensic interviews was accompanied by a shift of focus from nonverbal lie detection to verbal lie detection. This change was based on findings of enhanced lie detection accuracy when looking at verbal cues to deceit compared to null findings for nonverbal lie detection. Whereas verbal cues are often referred to as ‘verbal cues to deceit’, the majority of the verbal cues tested in the field are cues to truths (i.e., they detect truthful statements). Verbal cues to truths have repeatedly demonstrated stronger results than the few cues to deceit that were examined.

The main goal of this call is to understand how different contexts affect deceptive and truthful behavior and ultimately lie detection. There is a lack of research that helps us understand the effects of contexts on lie detection, including contexts differentiating (i) criminal, military, insurance, etc. interviews, (ii) single and multiple activities, (iii) cultures, (iv) interviews with single and multiple suspects, (vi) single and repeated interviews, (vii) native and non-native suspects, (viii) online and in person interviews, etc. Another goal of this call is to encourage the examination of verbal cues to deceit. Although there is an emerging effort to examine novel cues to deceit, more research needs to be done to enhance lie detection in practice.

We attempt to advance the existing literature on verbal lie detection by examining different and novel forensic-related contexts that may affect lie detection, and how these interplay with verbal cues to truths and deceit. We thus encourage submissions of manuscripts that tackle lie detection across different or novel contexts and that examine existing or novel verbal cues to truths and deceit. We are particularly interested in cross-cultural research and in online/in person interviewing, but we welcome any articles that examine different forensic contexts. We are mainly interested in contributions in the form of original research, but other types of contributions will be accepted.

Keywords: deception, lie detection, deceit, verbal cue, interview, investigative interview

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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