The Importance of Detecting Deception in Investigation Interviews

The ability to spot a liar is a valuable skill for investigators. Failure to detect a lie during an investigation interview can put the entire investigation at risk, and could lead to a lawsuit, cause an innocent person to lose a job or go to jail, or even put a company into bankruptcy.

Detecting Deception

According to research from Robert Feldman, a psychology professor at the University of Massachusetts, people lie an average of three times in the first 10 minutes of becoming acquainted with someone.

When some people are under interrogation, their body language may match the typical signs of deception, even though they aren’t lying. On the other hand, some people are aware of the “typical” signs of lying, so they do the opposite to make you believe that they are telling the truth. This makes it hard to use physical queues as a sign of deception.

Listening to Words

From body language and blood pressure to heart rate and eye movements, investigators have tried to identify physical symptoms that point to deception. But there’s another equally effective way to smoke out lies, and that is by analyzing a subject’s choice of words. The language that a person uses to recount events can provide powerful clues to the truth.

“Once the interviewee begins to talk, the interviewer must be able to detect deception,” says expert investigator and instructor Don Rabon. “The form of the deception and the specific elements of deception have to be identified.” These are the skills investigators need to conduct effective investigations. “And like any other skill, the more we practice, the better we get,” he says.

Free Webinar

To help you hone your ability to detect deception during investigation interviews, Rabon will share his strategies for analyzing deceptive language in an upcoming webinar.

The webinar, “Detecting Deception: Investigation Interviewing Skills,” is free to attend and will take place on Thursday April 26^th and will start at 2pm EDT.

During the webinar, Rabon will teach you:

• How to identify  the forms of the deception
• How to determine where and how an interviewee is being deceptive
• The importance of words and how the language we use changes when we lie
• How to tell the difference between what subjects say and what they really mean