Discriminating between true and false intentions: The role of planning
Sammanfattning: An ability to discriminate between true and false intent (i.e., true and deceptive statements about one’s intended future actions) is critical for many legal professionals (e.g., security personnel, customs officers, judges at parole hearings). However, it is only in recent years that psycho-legal researchers have turned to this topic. The current thesis adds to this burgeoning field by examining true and false intent in relation to the concept of planning—a typical concomitant of a true intention. Study I examined the benefit of asking unanticipated questions when interviewing groups of suspects on repeated occasions. Participants were divided into triads of truth tellers and liars. In their groups of three, truth tellers planned a neutral task, while liars planned a mock crime. Liars also prepared a cover-story—thematically similar to the truth tellers’ task—to be used if they were apprehended. Participants were intercepted after planning their tasks. In subsequent interviews participants were asked anticipated questions on their intentions, and unanticipated questions on the planning of their intentions. Suspects were interviewed once in Experiment 1 (N = 132), and three times in Experiment 2 (N = 123). Truth tellers provided longer and more detailed answers than liars, and had higher levels of within-group consistency compared to liars. This was the case for answers to both anticipated and unanticipated questions. No differences between truth tellers and liars were found for between-statement consistency. The results highlight within-group consistency as an important cue to deceit. However, a number of limitations to the unanticipated questions approach were evident. Study II examined whether indicators of good planning behavior could provide novel insights into potential cues to discriminate between true and false statements of intent. The data for Study II came from the same data set as Study I (Experiment 1). The transcribed interviews of truth tellers and liars were coded for markers of good planning behavior (e.g., effective time allocation; implementation intention related utterings; and likelihood to speak of potential problems). As predicted truth tellers’ statements were colored to a higher degree than liars’ by such markers. Overall, results from the two studies highlight how attending to the concept of planning can aid in the development of strategic interviewing methods to distinguish between true and false statements of intent.
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