Tag Archive for Shortcomings

Police As Lie Detectors

by  • March 6, 2013 • 0 Comments

In a 2004 study out of the University of Portsmouth by Samantha Mann, Aldert Vrij and Ray Bull it was found that police officers were sixty-five percent accurate in detecting lies when they watched the proceedings of an interrogation. This success rate is significantly higher than that which could arise by chance alone and also shows that familiarity with the subjects can have a role in increasing accuracy. Most research thus far has used college students, but this shows that police who frequently deal with suspects might have an advantage reading them over reading others. By a similarly notion, this advantage would theoretically be non-existent for police officers in a business meeting or with regard to a salesperson on a car lot, unless they had particular experience with such matters. This study does tell us that familiarity with the subject and the context can help us in detecting lies.

Police manuals give the impression that officers who interview suspects often, are good lie detectors, despite of course the vast research that says otherwise. When the researchers qualified their observations however, they found some surprising findings. Officers who named visual cues such as those mentioned in Inbau’s research, mentioned previously, which forms part of the manual on lie detection for police, such as gaze aversion, unnatural changes in posture, self touching, mouth and eye covering were less likely to be accurate in reading others. In fact, these cues proved counterproductive. Specifically, female participants who claimed to use Inbau’s cues most often where poorer at detecting truths, than the males who did not. In particular, gaze aversion was unhelpful and in fact distracting when analyzing for truth. So despite the moderate success of officers at detecting lies, there still remains severe shortcomings because it was not necessarily due to observations of body language or other anything else that could be described, catalogued, and hence put to use. If an inherent skill amounts to a sixty-five percent success, but one can’t describe that skill in a way that makes it useful to other people, then it simply appears like a hunch. Hunches are not reliable, nor do they meet the scientific principle of reproducibility or have predictive (useful) qualities.

Eye Contact During A Job Interview

by  • March 5, 2013 • 0 Comments

Eye contact during an interview has been repeatedly found to have a powerful influence on the interviewer. Interviewees who hold good eye contact tend to receive more favourable hiring decisions, to be rated more positively and to be rated more suitable for jobs requiring self confidence.

The most appropriate types of eye contact in an interview have been shown through research to be about two to three second bursts of eye contact followed by looking away. Looking down continuously or avoiding eye contact altogether, or conversely, holding extended eye contact can all result in poor judgment. Continuous shifting of the eyes around the room can come off as dishonest and can make people think that you are expecting to be bust at anytime. For what, the interviewee doesn’t know, but he will remain suspicious nonetheless. Looking toward the door or appearing distracted by what is going on outside a window will only serve to demonstrate your lack of interest in the job position and negative feelings will be attached to you personally. Poor eye contact might also be taken by the interviewer personally and he may become offended. As interviewees, we must pay particular attention to good eye contact while listening and while speaking. Most of us are good at one, but not both, but being aware of our shortcomings is at least a good first step. So don’t dismiss good eye language in an interview and follow the patterns described above: two to three second bursts of eye contact followed by looking away.