FSC220 Ch. 4 - Deception
What are the 2 dimensions that deception disorders vary from one another?
(1) whether the person intentionally or consciously produces the symptoms, and (2) whether the motivation is internal or external.
What are Event-related brain potentials (ERPs)?
- A type of brain-based response that has been investigated for detecting deception. ERPs are measured by placing electrodes on the scalp and by noting changes in electrical patterns related to presentation of a stimulus. ERPs reflect underlying electrical activity in the cerebral cortex. One type of ERP that has shown promise is known as the P300. One of the advantages of ERPs is that they have been proposed as a meas- ure resistant to manipulation (Farwell, 2012).
What is factitious disorder?
- Falsification of physical or psychological signs or symptoms, or induction of injury or disease; - Individual presents himself or herself to others as ill, impaired, or injured; - Deceptive behavior is evident even in the absence of obvious external rewards. Eisendrath (1996) has suggested that patients might be aware they are intentionally producing the symptoms, but they may lack insight into the underlying psychological motivation.
What findings did DePaulo and colleagues find when studying verbal cues and deception?
- That liars provided fewer details than truth-tellers. - Liars told less compelling accounts compared with truth-tellers. For example, liars' stories were less likely to make sense (less plausible, lacking logical structure, had discrepancies), were less engaging, and were less fluent than truth-tellers' stories. - Liars were rated as less cooperative and more nervous and tense than truth-tellers. - Truth-tellers were more likely to spontaneously correct their stories and more likely to admit to a lack of memory than liars were. Deception cues were easier to detect when liars were motivated to lie or when they were attempting to cover up a personal failing or a transgression (high stakes lies).
What is the Comparison Question Test? AKA the Control Question test
- The most commonly used test to investigate criminal acts. First, the polygraph examiner becomes familiar with the case by reading the police file or speaking with the police investigator. Next, the examiner meets with the suspect and conducts a pretest interview in which the suspect is asked about the offense. During this stage the examiner develops a series of 'yes' or 'no' questions. During the testing phase, the examiner then connects the suspect to the polygraph and measures the suspect's physiological response to the questions. The questions are repeated three to five times in different order. The examiner then scores the physio- logical responses and ends the CQT with a post-test interview in which the test results are discussed.
What are 3 main ways of research to study malingering?
1. Case study 2. Simulation 3. Known groups
What are three explanatory models of malingering?
1. Pathogenic 2. Criminological 3. Adaptational In a study, the adaptational model was rated as the most important model in malingering, and the pathogenic model was the least important.
What is a flaw of the CIT?
Critics of the CIT have warned that this test will work only if the suspect remembers the details of the crime (Honts & Schweinle, 2009). Criminals may not remember specific details from their crimes or may have memory interference from past crimes.
What are the 3 reasons for why deception detection is so inaccurate?
1. People tend to rely on behaviours that lack predictive validity; - people believe that two cues indicative of deceit are avoiding eye contact and fidgeting 2. Most people have a truth-bias; - refers to the tendency of people to judge more messages as truthful than deceptive 3. There are only small differences between truth-tellers and liars
What are the eight scales that represent different strategies that a person might employ when malingering?
1. Rare symptoms: symptoms that true patients endorse very infrequently 2. Symptom combinations: uncommon pairings of symptoms 3. Improbable or absurd symptoms: symptoms unlikely to be true, since true patients rarely endorsed them 4. Blatant symptoms: items that are obvious signs of mental disorder 5. Subtle symptoms: items that contain what most people consider every day problems 6. Selectivity of symptoms: ratio of symptoms endorsed versus those not endorsed 7. Severity of symptoms: number of severe symptoms reported 8. Reported versus observed symptoms: discrepancy between self-report and observable symptoms
What is done in the pretest interview?
1. The polygraph examiner develops the comparison questions, learns about the background of the suspect, and attempts to convince the suspect of the accuracy of the polygraph test. The examiner will do this by quoting very high accuracy rates and conducting a stimulation test. For example, the suspect will pick a card with a number on it from a deck of cards, and the examiner will determine the number by examining the polygraph chart. The deck of cards is rigged so the examiner knows which card the suspect picked.
What is a polygraph test?
A device for recording an individual's autonomic nervous system responses. Measurement devices are attached to the upper chest and abdomen to measure breathing. The amount of sweat on the skin is measured by attaching elec- trodes to the fingertips. Sweat changes the conductance of the skin, which is known as the skin conductance response. Finally, heart rate is measured by a partially inflated blood pressure cuff attached to an arm. Each of these measures is amplified and stored on a computer to be analyzed. In a forensic context, a polygraph is used to measure a person's physiological responses to questions asked by an examiner.
What were the results of the study done by McCabe, Castel, and Rhodes (2011) examining the influence of evidence from the polygraph, fMRI lie detection, or thermal imaging on verdicts in a mock juror trial?
A sample of undergraduates read a court transcript in which a defendant was accused of killing his estranged wife and her lover. Students were randomly assigned to four conditions: control (no expert testified), polygraph (expert testified the defendant was lying when he denied killing his wife and her lover), thermal imaging (expert testified the temperature in defendant's face increased when he denied killing his wife and her lover), and fMRI (expert testified there was increased activation of the frontal brain areas when defendant denied killing his wife and her lover). Evidence from fMRI lie detection resulted in more guilty verdicts when compared with the other types of evidence being presented. Figure 4.1 presents the percentage of guilty verdicts across these conditions. However, the researchers found that if expert testimony that questioned the validity of fMRI lie detection was included, the number of guilty verdicts was reduced to a similar level as in the other conditions. There are clearly a number of practical, scientific, and ethical issues that need to be considered before fMRI evidence makes its way into the courtroom.
What is the adaptational model of malingering?
According to this model, malingering is likely to occur when: (1) there is a perceived adversarial context, (2) personal stakes are very high, and (3) no other viable alternatives are perceived. Research findings support this model in that there are higher rates of malingering in adversarial settings or when the personal stakes are high. This model provides the broadest and least derogatory explanation of malingering.
What findings did Adams and Harpster find when analyzing 911 calls from innocent people vs the killers?
Adams and Harpster (2008) analyzed a hundred 911 calls coding what the call was about, whom the call was from, and how the call was made. Fifty of the calls were from innocent people calling for help, whereas the other 50 were from the perpetrator or the person who had arranged the murder. Innocent callers were more likely: - to make requests for help for the victim - to correct any misperceptions during the call - to be rude and demanding of immediate assistance - to cooperate with the 911 operator - display considerable emotion in their voices and spoke quickly. Callers who had committed or organized the killing were more likely to: - provide irrelevant details - blame or insult the victim - state that the victim was dead - be polite and patient, with little emotion displayed in the voice.
How can case studies be used to study malingering?
Although case studies are not used as often as they once were, they are useful for generating a wide variety of hypotheses that can be tested by using designs with more experimental rigour. In addition, a case study is the only way to examine rare syndromes such as MBP syndrome.
What is the Structured Interview of Reported Symptoms (SIRS)?
An interview-based method of determining malingered psychosis. It was initially developed in 1985, and in its most recent version, it consists of 172 items that are scored from a structured interview. The items are organized into the following eight scales that represent different strategies that a person might employ when malingering. The SIRS has been extensively validated by using both simulation and known-groups designs, and research has consistently demonstrated differences in SIRS scores between honest and simulating samples, and between clinical samples and suspected malingerers. A recent meta-analysis of 26 studies provided strong support for the accuracy of the SIRS as a measure of malingering mental disorders.
What are countermeasures?
As applied to polygraph research, techniques used to try to conceal guilt
What is the Employee Polygraph Protection Act of 1988?
At one time, the most widespread applications of polygraph testing in the United States were for the periodic testing of employees to identify those engaged in theft or using drugs at work and for the screening of prospective employees, to weed out those with criminal tendencies or substance-abuse problems. However, the Employee Polygraph Protection Act of 1988 restricted private companies from using the polygraph for these purposes and limited the use of the polygraph to spe- cific investigations of job-related wrongdoing.
Compare the accuracy of the CIT and CQT?
Based on the research described above, the CIT appears to be vulnerable to false-negative errors (falsely classifying guilty suspects as innocent), whereas the CQT is vulnerable to false-positive errors (falsely classifying innocent suspects as guilty).
What is Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy? (In DSM-5 this is called factitious disorder imposed on another)
Cases in which parents or caregivers falsified symptoms in their children. Ex: a parent might purposely overdose a child with medicine and take the child to the hospital for treatment. The goal is for the parent to get the attention and sympathy of others.
Why are confessions problematic?
Confessions are also problematic. Although rare, some people may falsely confess. More significant, however, is the problem that confessions are often not independent from the polygraph examiner's decisions. Confessions are often elicited because a person fails a polygraph exam. Moreover, cases in which a guilty suspect passes the polygraph are not included in research studies. Thus, reliance on confessions to establish ground truth likely inflates polygraph accuracy rates. Most field studies have used confessions to establish ground truth.
What is defensiveness?
Conscious denial or extreme minimization of physical or psychological symptoms. Patients or offenders seek to present themselves in a favourable light. Minimization of physical and psychological symptoms varies both in degree and motivation. Some people might want to appear to be functioning well to meet an external need, such as being a fit parent, or an internal need, such as unwillingness to acknowledge they are a "patient." Degree of defensiveness can range from mild, such as downplaying a minor symptom, to outright denial of a more serious psychological impairment, such as denying hearing command hallucinations.
How do examiners score the suspects in polygraph tests?
Examiners in the past used global scoring, incorporating all available informa- tion—including physiological responses, the suspect's demeanour during the exami- nation, and information in the case file—to make a decision about the guilt or the innocence of the suspect. Most examiners now numerically score the charts to ensure that decisions are based solely on the physiological responses. A polygraph test has three possible outcomes: truthful, deceptive, and inconclusive. During the post-test interview, the examiner tells the suspect the outcome, and if the outcome is deceptive the examiner attempts to obtain a confession.
What is a polygraph disclosure test?
Polygraph disclosure tests are used to uncover information about an offender's past behaviour.
What studies have been done on P300?
Farwell and Donchin (1991) conducted one of the first studies on the use of the P300 to detect the presence of guilty knowledge. The study consisted of two experiments. In the first experiment, participants role-played one of two espionage scenarios that involved the exchange of information with a foreign agent, during which they were exposed to six critical details (e.g., the colour of the agent's hat). In the second exper- iment, participants were asked about details of minor offences they had committed in their day-to-day lives. In the first experiment, using P300 as the measure, 18 of 20 participants were correctly classified in the guilty condition, and 17 of 20 were cor- rectly classified in the innocent condition. In the second experiment, all four of the guilty participants were correctly classified, and three of the four innocent participants were correctly classified. Although the results look impressive, there are several limitations to this study. First, guilty participants reviewed the crime-relevant details just prior to taking the CIT. In addition, there were no aversive consequences linked to performance in this study. Finally, the sample size, especially in the second experiment, was very small. Abootalebi and colleagues (2006) recently reported lower detec- tion rates than previously reported (e.g., Rosenfeld et al., 1991) when employing the P300-CIT paradigm, with correct identification ranging from 74% to 80%, depending on the approach.
How do field studies work in determining the validity of polygraph tests?
Field studies involve real-life situations and actual criminal suspects, together with actual polygraph examinations. Field studies often compare the accuracy of "original" examiners to "blind" evaluators. Original examiners conduct the actual evaluation of the suspect. Blind evaluators are provided with only the original examiner's charts and are given no information about the suspect or the case. Original examiners are exposed to extra polygraph cues—information about the case in addition to that obtained via the polygraph, such as the case facts and the behaviour of the suspect during the examination. Although polygraph examiners are taught to ignore these cues, Patrick and Iacono (1991) found that examiners are nonetheless significantly influenced by them.
What is the criminological model of malingering?
Focuses on 'badness': "a bad person (Antisocial Personality Disorder), in bad circumstances (legal difficulties), who is performing badly (uncooperative)." According to this definition, malingering should be suspected in any forensic evaluation, when there are substantial differences between what a person reports and what others observe, when someone refuses to comply with an evaluation, and when the person is diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder.
How do laboratory studies work in determining the validity of polygraph tests?
In laboratory studies, volunteers (often university students) simulate criminal behaviour by committing a mock crime. Volunteers come to a laboratory and are randomly assigned to one of two conditions: committing a mock crime or not com- mitting a mock crime.
What is malingering?
Intentionally faking psychological or physical symptoms for some type of external gain. The two key components to malingering are that: (1) the psychological or physical symptoms are clearly under voluntary control, and (2) there are external motivations for the production of symptoms
What are irrelevant questions in the CQT?
Irrelevant questions, referring to the respondent's identity or personal background (e.g., "Is your first name Beatrice, are you from chigaco?"), are included as a baseline but are not scored.
What is the known-groups design in researching malingering?
It involves two stages: (1) the establishment of the criterion groups (e.g., genuine patients and malingerers) and (2) an analysis of the similarities and differences between these criterion groups. The main strength of the known-groups design is its generalizability to real-world settings. Its chief limitation is the establishment of the criterion groups. Samples of the genuine patients likely include errors, and some of the classified malingerers may be genuine patients. Because of the difficulty with the reliable and accurate classification of criterion groups, this design is rarely used in malingering research.
What are the limitations of fMRI research?
It is typically based on averaging fMRI data across multiple participants, which constrains its use for detecting deception in individuals. In addition, studies have used healthy volunteers who have been screened for neurological and psychiatric disorders, who have been instructed to lie, and who do not face any serious consequences. How well this technique will generalize to real-life cases remains to be investigated. Although there are already commercial companies such as No Lie MRI (established in 2006) encouraging the use of fMRI in legal proceedings, most scientists feel that it is premature to use fMRI to detect deception and that the results should not be admissible to court. - There are also concerns that brain-imaging evidence may have a particularly powerful influence on juror decision making. Simply seeing pictures of brain images makes people believe that scientific results are more valid
What was the Frye v. US (1923) case about?
James Frye was denied the opportunity to have the results of a polygraph test conducted by William Marston admitted as evidence. This ruling led to the requirement that a technique must obtain "general acceptance" by the rele- vant scientific community before it can be admitted as evidence. Polygraph evidence is not admissible in Canadian criminal courts of law. In R. v. Beland (1987), the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that polygraph evidence should not be admitted to help to determine whether a person is telling the truth. The court referred to the polygraph as being falsely imbued with the "mystique of science," thus causing jurors to give polygraph evidence more weight than it deserves when determining the verdict.
Why are judicial outcomes problematic?
Judicial outcomes are problematic because some people are falsely convicted and some guilty people are not convicted.
What are the indicators of Malingered Psychosis?
Malingerers often tend to overact, believing the more bizarre they are, the more psychotic they will appear. ■ Understandable motive for committing crime ■ Presence of a partner in the crime ■ Current crime fits pattern of previous criminal history ■ Suspicious hallucinations - Continuous rather than intermittent - Vague or inaudible hallucinations - Hallucinations with no delusions - Inability to describe strategies to diminish voices - Claiming all command hallucinations are obeyed - Visual hallucinations in black and white ■ Suspicious delusions - Abrupt onset or termination - Eagerness to discuss delusions - Conduct markedly inconsistent with delusions - Elaborate delusions that lack paranoid, grandiose, or religious themes ■ Marked discrepancies in interview versus noninterview behaviour ■ Sudden emergence of psychotic symptoms to explain criminal act ■ Absence of any subtle signs of psychosis
Is the CIT accurate?
Mock-crime laboratory studies evaluating the CIT indicate that it is very effective at identifying innocent participants (hit rates of up to 95%) and slightly less effective at iden- tifying guilty participants (hit rates between 76% and 85%). A meta-analysis of 80 CIT studies examined what factors are associated with higher accuracies. Correct outcomes were better in studies that included motives to succeed, verbal response to alternatives, five or more questions, and in laboratory mock-crime studies. Two published field studies, both done in Israel, have assessed the accuracy of the CIT. Elaad (1990) found that 98% of innocent suspects were correctly classified, but only 42% of guilty suspects were correctly classi- fied. Elaad, Ginton, and Jungman (1992) measured both respiration and skin conductance and found that 94% of innocent and 76% of guilty suspects were correctly classified.
Are CQT accurate?
Most guilty suspects (84% to 92%) are correctly classified as guilty. However, the picture for innocent suspects is less optimistic, with accuracy rates ranging from 55% to 78%. Many of the innocent suspects were classified as inconclusive. Between 9% and 24% of innocent suspects were falsely identified as guilty. Such a high false-positive rate indicates that innocent people respond more to relevant than comparison questions, suggesting that the premise underlying the CQT does not apply to all suspects.
How can simulation design be used to study malingering? (similar to polygraph laboratory studies)
Participants are told to malinger a specific disorder and are typically compared with two groups: (1) a control group randomly selected from the same population as the malingerers, (2) a clinical comparison group representing the disorders or symptoms that are being feigned. These studies address whether measures can detect malingering in nonclinical samples. However, individuals with mental disorders may also malinger. Studies have begun to ask patients with mental disorders to feign a different mental disorder or to exaggerate the severity of their symptoms. These studies address how effectively participants with mental disorders can malinger. To examine the relative efficacy of detection methods for disordered and non-disordered samples, the optimal simulation design would use four groups: non-clinical experimental, nonclinical-control, clinical-experimental, and clinical-control.
What assumptions are made by polygraph examiners?
Polygraph examiners assume they can detect deception by comparing reactions to the relevant and comparison questions. Guilty suspects are assumed to react more to relevant questions than comparison questions. In contrast, innocent suspects are assumed to react more to comparison questions than relevant questions. The reasoning behind these assumptions is that innocent people know they are telling the truth about the relevant question, so they will react more strongly to general questions about their honesty and past history.
What are comparison questions?
Probable-lie comparison questions (also known as control questions) are designed to be emotionally arousing for all respondents and typically focus on the person's honesty and past history prior to the event being investigated (e.g., "Before the age of 45, did you ever try to seriously hurt someone?")
What are relevant questions?
Relevant and comparison questions establish guilt or innocence. Relevant questions deal with the crime being investigated (e.g., "On June 12, did you stab your ex-wife?").
Explain the research done by Honts, Raskin, and Kircher (1994) on countermeasures and the polygraph test?
Showed that 30 minutes of instruction on the rationale underlying the CQT was sufficient for community volunteers to learn how to escape detection in a mock-crime study. Participants were told to use either physical counter-measures (e.g., biting their tongue or pressing their toes on the floor) or mental countermeasures (e.g., counting backward by 7 from a number greater than 200) when asked a comparison question during the polygraph exam. Both countermeasures worked, with 50% of the guilty suspects beating the polygraph test. In addition, the polygraph examiners were not able to accurately detect which participants had used the countermeasures.
How are polygraph disclosure tests useful when dealing with sexual offenders?
Some sexual offender treatment programs require sexual offenders to take a polygraph to help uncover undetected offences. For example, Bourke and colleagues (2015) polygraphed 127 sexual offend- ers with no official history of hands-on offending. Prior to the polygraph, 5% admit- ted to sexually abusing a child, but during the polygraph procedure, 53% disclosed about hands-on sexual abuse. In addition, polygraph tests have been used to deter- mine whether the offender is violating the conditions of probation or to test for evi- dence of risky behaviour, such as sexual fantasies about children.
How does the questioning work with the CQT?
The examiner then asks ten questions to be answered with either "yes" or "no." Table 4.1 provides an example of a typical question series used in a CQT. Three types of questions are asked: irrelevant questions, relevant questions, and comparison questions?
What is the general form of the CIT?
The general form of the CIT is a series of questions in multiple-choice format. Each question has one correct option (often called the critical option) and four options that are foils—alternatives that could fit the crime but that are incorrect. A CIT question in the context of a homicide might take the following form: "Did you kill the person with (a) a knife, (b) an axe, (c) a handgun, (d) a crowbar, or (e) a rifle?" The guilty suspect is assumed to display a larger physiological response to the correct option than to the incorrect options. An innocent person, conversely, who does not know the details of the crime, will show the same physiological response to all options.
What are cons of field studies when determining the validity of polygraph tests?
The largest problem with field studies is establishing ground truth. Indicators of guilt, such as physical evidence, eyewitness testimony, or DNA evidence, are often not available. In such situations, truth is more difficult to establish. To deal with this problem, two additional ways of establishing ground truth have been developed: judicial outcomes and confessions.
What are pros and cons of laboratory studies when determining the validity of polygraph tests?
The main advantage of these studies is that the experimenter knows ground truth (i.e., who is truly guilty or innocent). In addition, laboratory studies can also compare the relative merits of different types of polygraph tests and control for variables such as the time between the crime and the polygraph exam. However, because of the large motivational and emotional differences between vol- unteers in laboratory studies and actual suspects in real-life situations, the results of laboratory studies may have limited application to real life. In laboratory studies, guilty participants cannot ethically be given strong incentives to "beat" the polygraph, and both guilty and innocent participants have little to fear if they "fail" the polygraph exam.
What have fMRI studies on deception shown?
The most consistent finding from the studies is that the lie conditions produce greater activation in the prefrontal and anterior cingulate regions as compared to truth conditions. These findings and others indicate that brain-imaging techniques can dif- ferentiate which parts of the brain are involved in lying and may even indicate which areas are associated with different types of lying. fMRI laboratory studies have found that deceptive and honest responses can be detected at accuracies around 90%.
What is the MMPI-2?
The most widely used personality inventory to assess non-offenders and offenders. The MMPI-2 includes several clinical scales to assess psychopathology but also includes several scales specifically designed to test "faking-bad," or malingering. For example, the items on the Infrequency (F) scale and the Back F (Fb) scale were developed to detect unusual or atypical symptoms and consist of items endorsed by less than 10% of a normative sample. A comprehensive meta-analysis of the MMPI-2 and malingering found that the F and Fb scales were the most useful at detecting malingerers.
What is the pathogenic model of malingering?
The pathogenic model assumes that people are motivated to malinger because of an underlying mental disorder. According to this model, the patient attempts to gain control over his or her pathology by creating bogus symptoms. Over time, these patients experience more severe mental disorders and the true symptoms emerge. Little empirical support exists for this model.
What are advantages and disadvantages of simulation experiments?
The primary strength of the simulation design is its experimental rigour (detail oriented, accurate, strength). The main disadvantage is its limited generalizability to the real world. Simulation studies are often limited in their clinical usefulness because of the minimal levels of preparation and level of motivation by participants. Early studies used brief and nonspecific instructions, such as "Appear mentally ill." Instructions are now more specific, with some studies giving participants a scenario to follow: for example, "Imagine you have been in a car accident and you hit your head. You have decided to exaggerate the amount of memory problems you are having to obtain a larger monetary settlement from the car insurance company."
What assumptions are made in the CIT?
The principle that people will react more strongly to information they recognize as distinctive or important than to unimportant information. Suspects who consistently respond to critical items are assumed to have knowledge of the crime. The likelihood that an innocent person with no knowledge of the crime would react most strongly to the critical alternative is one in five for each question. If ten questions are asked, the odds that an innocent person will consistently react to the critical alternative are exceedingly small (less than 1 in 10 000 000).
What is the P300?
This ERP occurs in response to significant stimuli that occur infrequently. When using CIT procedures, guilty suspects should respond to crime-relevant events with a large P300 response, compared with their response to noncrime-relevant events. No difference in P300 responses to crime-relevant and irrelevant events should be observed in innocent suspects. Several studies have been conducted to assess the validity of the P300 as a guilt detector
What is the Concealed Information Test?
This test was developed by Lykken (1960) and was originally called the Guilty Knowledge Test but is currently known as the Concealed Information Test (CIT). The CIT does not assess deception but instead seeks to determine whether the suspect knows details about a crime that only the person who committed the crime would know. The most common physiological response measured when administering the CIT is palmar sweating (i.e., skin conductance response).
Explain the research done by Iacono, Cerri, Patrick, and Fleming (1992) on anti anxiety drugs and the polygraph test?
Undergraduate students were divided into one innocent group (who watched a noncrime videotape) and four guilty groups. Participants in the guilty groups watched a videotaped crime and then were given one of three drugs (diazepam, meprobamate, or propranolol) or a placebo prior to being administered a CIT. None of the drugs had an effect on the accuracy of the CIT. In addition, the polygraph examiner was able to identify 90% of the participants receiving drugs.
How can covert movements interfere with fMRI results?
When participants did not use this countermeasure, deception detection accuracy was 100%, but it was only 33% when the countermeasure was used.
How have fMRI been used as lie detection?
fMRI measures the cerebral blood flow (a marker of neurological activity) in different areas of the brain. The appeal of using a brain-based lie detection approach is that instead of measuring emotional arousal, researchers hope that it measures the actual process of deception. Researchers have used fMRI to determine which areas of the brain are associated with deception in a variety of deception paradigms, including forced-choice lies (e.g., responding yes when the truth is no)
What are some examples of why people typically malinger mental illness?
■ A criminal may attempt to avoid punishment by pretending to be unfit to stand trial, to have a mental illness at the time of a criminal act, or to have an acute mental illness to avoid being executed. ■ Prisoners or patients may seek drugs, or prisoners may want to be transferred to a psychiatric facility to do easier time or escape. ■ Malingerers may seek to avoid conscription to the military or to avoid certain military duties. ■ Malingerers may seek financial gain from disability claims, workers' compensa- tion, or damages from alleged injury. ■ Malingerers may seek admission to a hospital to obtain free room and board.
What are nonverbal deception characteristics that have been found through research?
■ Gaze aversion (avoiding looking at the face of conversation partner or interviewer) ■ Smiling (frequency of smiles or laughs) ■ Blinking (frequency of eyeblinks) ■ Fidgeting (scratching head, playing with jewellery) ■ Illustrators (gestures to modify or supplement what is being said) ■ Hand or finger movements ■ Leg or foot movements ■ Body movements ■ Shrugs (frequency of shoulders raised in an "I-don't-know"-type gesture) ■ Head movements (nodding or shaking head) ■ Shifting positions
What are verbal deception characteristics that have been found through research?
■ Speech fillers (increased frequency of saying "ah" or "umm") ■ Speech errors (word or sentence repetition, sentence change, sentence incompletion, or slips of the tongue) ■ Pitch of voice (changes in pitch, usually higher) ■ Rate of speech (number of words spoken in a specific time period is slower) ■ Speech pauses (length of silence between question asked and answer given; number of noticeable pauses in speech)