When you're in an interrogation as a suspect, you're effectively engaging in this game of lie detection. Tell us what happened. I feel like I was in self-defense. You're trying to suppress the things that you think the other person is looking for: nervousness, fidgeting, whether or not you're keeping your story straight. But one of them you said she let you use. Yeah. This itself makes you look guilty because they're clearly hiding something, and what you're hiding is your nervousness. You are not going to tell me what to do. You're more likely to get false confessions and information that is wrong.
Just the perfect sync. So, I'm ready. I'm Dr. Julia Shaw, a criminal psychologist, and I am a researcher who studies investigations and interrogations.
All right, buddy. Like you said, I'm Marcus. This is Jason. Yeah. An interrogation is a police interview that is often confrontational, and it's often trying to get the truth out of someone who doesn't want to give it. You know why you're here, right? Tell us what happened to me. The purpose of an interrogation is to gain a confession. So if you've committed a crime, obviously the last thing you typically want to do is confess. I don't know how it happened. I don't know why it happened. I don't even really remember it. So a crime is reported to the police. Then the police look for evidence. Once they have enough evidence, and that's usually at least two pieces of evidence to implicate somebody specific, that person is brought in for an interrogation. How do you spell your first name? Christian, as in like the religion. There needs to be some probable reason that this person could have or probably did commit the crime, and that's who's sitting in front of you.
There's a huge amount of research on police investigations and interrogations. And the main thing that scientists have found is that it's really important for interviewers to understand the psychology of the social situation they are creating, and that how you move as a police officer, how you create your environment, what kind of room the person is in, that that is going to have a profound impact on both the mental well-being of someone who's sitting across from you, but also on what they're going to say. Lots of police officers know this, which is why they create specific kinds of rooms, sort of leaving people to be filmed on their own for a while before you go in to see a sort of baseline: how does this person move? But it's also in how police officers ask questions of suspects.
Of course here. Let's say you have lots of evidence already against somebody. They're sitting in front of you. You're hoping for a confession. One of the ways in which certainly scientists recommend doing that is to use what's called a shift of strategy approach. What you ideally do is you put one piece of evidence down and you say, 'Can you explain this to me?' Well, tell me this. Who is she to you? I mean, how do you... She was just a friend, and she let me use her car and her cell phone. And then see how the person builds that into their story. Then you put down the next piece of information and see if the person changes their story, shifts their strategy. How was she supposed to call you? Did you have... I had her cell phone. Oh, you had her cell phone? Yeah. Okay. So, she was supposed to call you on the cell phone. Yeah, she was supposed to call me on the cell phone. Unfortunately, the cell phone died. And basically, if you see someone constantly pivoting in how they're telling the story, you're on to a lie. I mean, is there something else you stole from her that is more important than a car? As far as I know, I did just the car and the jewelry. But one of them you said she let you use.
Yeah. Another technique to try and get people to confess is called maximization, which is where you increase the severity of the crime. So you say, 'If you don't tell me the truth, you're going to go to prison.' And minimization, which is almost like a buddy-buddy, good cop kind of approach. You all having a long night? Yeah. Here's the deal. Okay. I called you. You graciously answered the phone, asked you to come in. All I'm asking, and I say this to everyone, just be honest. Okay. Oh, yeah. I'll give you a hundred with you, bro. Okay. But here's the other thing I want you to realize. Okay? You walk up in here and you're talking to my partner, calling him bro. He's over twice your age. You should be calling him sir. You need to grow up, young man. Sir, can you please stop raising your voice? No, I will not. Because you know what? You are not going to tell me what to do. There's instruction on exactly what police officers should be saying. And you're pursuing almost relentlessly this confession, which can sometimes take hours, sometimes take days to elicit. The ultimate goal of any interrogation is a confession.
One of the questions that people have, especially if they are innocent, is how do I look innocent? And if they're guilty, they might want to fake innocence as well. Psychologically speaking, the best thing you can do if you are innocent is not rely on the fact that people can tell that you're innocent, and to get a lawyer. And basically, generally, although not always, saying less is more, because the problem becomes, whether you're guilty or innocent, is if you start saying things that are contradictory. She let you use one of them, but she didn't know about the other one. Right. I, um, you know, I think I should probably get a lawyer. You think you probably should? Yeah, I think I need to talk to a lawyer because I don't know where this is going.
When you're in an interrogation as a suspect, what's happening is you're effectively engaging in this game of lie detection. You know that the police officer is probably looking for specific signs of lying. Whether you're innocent or guilty, you're trying to suppress the things that you think the other person is looking for. So things like signs of nervousness, fidgeting, whether or not you're keeping your story straight. There's all these stereotypical depictions of what a liar looks like. By the way, none of which are consistently true, but that doesn't mean that you don't know that the person across from you is probably looking for those cues. People do things like try and look sometimes overly calm to try and compensate for the fact that they know that looking nervous will make them look guilty. Uh, was it, I think, and then anyway, so I was supposed to take it up there. And so you're in this sort of arms race where you're trying to beat them at this game. They're looking for clues. None of you are actually engaging in things that are sort of scientifically backed.
So, it's sort of an interesting situation where you've got this act of suppression of things that make you look guilty, and the other person is looking at that potentially and saying, 'Well, this itself makes you look guilty because they're clearly hiding something, and what you're hiding is your nervousness, and that doesn't matter if you're guilty or innocent.' Police officers should not assume that they can tell when somebody is lying. And someone who is innocent or guilty should not assume that no matter what they do, that they are going to be able to cover up this look of guilt. Well, can I talk to a lawyer? I mean, you can get a lawyer and try and answer as few questions as possible.
In the United States, a lot of people will tell you that an interrogation is absolutely necessary in order to get a confession and to get to the truth. For example, the US are using techniques that get people to say a lot. I will file a complaint. Go ahead, do it. Go ahead. Go give me my lawyer. In the United Kingdom, we are not allowed to engage in those kinds of minimization and maximization techniques. It has to be a typically video-recorded interview that is neutral, that is non-judgmental, that is trying to get facts rather than a confession. An interrogation, as it's usually practiced in the United States, is specifically designed to get a confession out of someone. And then I remember standing over and she's dead and there's blood everywhere. And the reason for that is that confessions are one of the most compelling pieces of evidence in a trial. So if someone says, 'I did this,' they can engage in a plea deal and doesn't even need to go to trial, or it goes to trial and that is incredibly compelling evidence that means that this person will be convicted of a crime, which is generally what police want. They want someone to be held accountable for a crime.
It's understandable that if you're an interrogator that you are trying to look for signs as to whether or not someone is lying to you. The problem is that the research on lie detection consistently finds that people are overconfident. The only thing that liars have in common is that everybody lies differently. And the problem with that is that we can't apply universal cues. And so there's been about a hundred years of scientists trying to figure out how we can detect liars. And the only thing that scientists can agree on is that we can't. Is that we are very bad at detecting lies. And often people who try to detect them using incorrect cues actually do worse than people who don't try to rely on anything. So just because someone is moving in a certain way, police officers should not take that to indicate whether or not they are lying.
On a global scale, interrogations are becoming much more evidence-based. So there's both a worry about false confessions, which I think is good, and there is more respect, frankly, of people who are suspects of crimes. After all, they could be innocent, right? I think both of those things are leading overall to the recognition that we need to be less aggressive generally in interviews and not use some of these techniques that historically have led to wrongful convictions. Like, I have a lot of respect for police officers and how they do their jobs and how difficult it must be. But on the other hand, it's also important that when you're doing that hard job that you have all of the information you need to make accurate decisions about things like lying. And that is where psychological research can come in to help people to understand what kinds of things, what kinds of cues they should actually be relying on to help them accurately tell when someone is lying or not. All right, let's roll. Um...
