Vitalii Shapovalov. The rationale for an integrated approach when implementing psychological assessment of credibility of information
As you know, there are two main directions (approaches) in the assessment of accuracy in reporting:
- Instrumental methods of detection of deception with the use of the computer polygraph and other means.
- Non-instrumental methods of detection of deception. The psychological assessment of verbal and non-verbal criteria is in this direction — namely, the meaningful component of speech, the vocal components of speech and mimic-pantomimic manifestations of the studied subject.
These directions are not alternatives to each other, but they complement each other.
Professionals who work in the direction of non-instrumental methods of detection of deception, use analysis of speech and non-verbal expressions in combination. However, as a rule, the representatives of this direction are divided into two categories:
Category 1 — specialists who increasingly rely on non-verbal criteria, which if identified can be assessed and compared with the content of the statements and context of the situation. These specialists are professional investigators, interrogators, psychologists and psychodiagnosticians, profilers. Non-verbal criteria are considered as indicators of stress on specific verbal or visual stimulus, that allows to suggest on the basis of the recorded signs (criteria), the presence of false answers or statements in the behavior of the under test subject. In the literature these symptoms are also called “criteria of lies” or “signs of unreliability”;
Category 2 — these are the specialists who take as a basis the analysis of speech (content analysis, psycholinguistics, psychosemantics), and non-verbal communication is regarded as an additional channel of information.
Content criteria which are used in the implementation of speech analysis are divided into “criteria of truth” or “signs of authenticity”, and therefore “the criteria of a lie.”
No matter what methodology underlies the approach of a specialist, it inevitably faces a number of subjective factors, which greatly can affect the reliability of the results of his research and to increase the so-called subjective / a personal error. Subjective factors affecting the accuracy of the study include:
- Imposed hypothesis is one-sided provision of information by the customer based on their own speculation and assumptions. If the specialist in the field of non-tool lie detecting does not have sufficient professional maturity and ability to assess imposed “obvious facts” critically, the subjective factor may indirectly have an influence on making a decision.
- Social perception is the perception of the external signs of a person, matching them with his personal characteristics, interpretation and forecasting on the basis of his actions and deeds. For example, in the production of ballistic, dactyloscopic examination, a specialist in evaluating the available data does not clash with the identity of the suspect, accused and etc. When conducting forensic psychological examinations and / or any other psychological research, where the object of study is a man and his verbal and non-verbal products, there is a risk of unconscious come under the influence of social perception. That is, the specialist should have the ability to realize the resulting psychological subjectivity (projection) to the under test subject in the course of communication or observing them from the point of view of “like — dislike”, “pleasant — unpleasant”, etc. This is especially true when the object of study is a representative of the opposite sex to a specialist. In the case of the dominance of the unconscious “positive impression” in relation to the studied subject, the signs that will point out the lies or withholding information might be missed.
- Paradoxes which are related to the combination of truth and falsehood in the information. The paradox lies in the fact that the veracity of the testimony can have false elements, for example, the desire of the under test subject to minimize his role in an investigated event, to present their position from the point of view of social desirability, the desire to hide the true motives of their actions, or significant participants of the events under investigation, and so on. Without an integrated approach it may lead to the fact that due to the registration of any inconsistencies in the details, the testimony may be questioned by the person who evaluates them. And false, totally fabricated testimony can be artfully woven into any actions or events that happened in reality and can be confirmed by others, but actually occurred in another time and deliberately included by the under test subject to create a more believable lie.
It should also be noted that the admission of having committed a particular offence almost always contain the information that doesn’t reflect the reality, it is caused by both unintentional distortions and intentional lie, and admission that is adequate to the facts is never completely reliable, because the “true confession” is a subjectively authentic story that includes reconstructive and constructive elements.
The above subjective factors are largely able to influence the construction of working hypotheses and their subsequent validation in the course of the study. When testing the working hypothesis the effect that is known in sociology as the “Pygmalion effect” (Rosenthal effect) also has its hidden influence. The essence of this effect is the manifestation of the prejudice of the experimenter, which affects the result of the experiment. This is one of the factors that threaten internal validity. It may occur at any stage of research in any science. Perhaps the roots of this effect lie in the “professional egoism”, in an effort to defend their point of view and appreciate it as the only correct one. The feeling of their exceptional insight and impeccable logic makes them blind in relation to fundamental errors when building hypotheses and their subsequent verification.
Psychological assessment of the reliability of information can be carried out quickly and expert, that is:
— operational evaluation involves the assessment of the reported information directly “ here and now”, in the situation of participant observation (at the time of inquiry, business talks, negotiations, etc.), i.e. in situations where the insights are necessary to be provided or used immediately after the act of communication (for example, immediately after negotiations to sign a contract or not, etc.). For operational evaluation specialist must have special knowledge — namely, to have in their toolkit a set of diagnostic criteria (psychological characteristics), which in the course of a communicative act must be identified, qualitatively analyzed and interpreted in the consideration of the context of their manifestation. Operational type of evaluation requires high professionalism and a large field and experience, because it is most exposed to the listed subjective factors due to lack of time to rethink and the use of special analytical procedures;
— expert assessment means a comprehensive study of verbal and non-verbal expressions of the under test subject recorded in audio and video. For peer review only qualitative analysis of diagnostic criteria are insufficient, it requires the use of complex analytical procedures in which diagnostic criteria are organized, have a formalized algorithm of registration and, in addition to the qualitative analysis are to be measured, which allows to draw conclusions on the basis of the entire set of the recorded criteria, but not individually taken from the context of the situation, which significantly reduces the influence of subjective factors.
According to the author of this article, the use of separate signs of lie or truth to any research situation is not effective. In connection with the complexity of the object and subject of research in the field of non-instrumental methods of detection of deception, making conclusions that are based on interpretation of separate characteristics is insufficient. To ensure accuracy of deduction and reduce the probability of errors, it is necessary to use a set of psychological characteristics, as reliability and unreliability that are organized into a methodical framework. Those methodical framework allow to reduce subjective / personal error, and the theoretical and practical elaboration of the methodology should reduce the methodical error.