Lying strategies in juveniles during Behavior Analysis Interviews

Police officers use the Behavior Analysis Interview (BAI) to detect deceit, but it is based on faulty indicators of lying and may be problematic for juveniles due to developmental immaturities. This study compared juveniles’, young adults’, and adults’ reported willingness to engage in truthful and deceitful responses during a hypothetical BAI. Regardless of guilt condition or age, participants were more willing to engage in truthful, suggesting they can manipulate their behaviors to appear innocent. Guilty participants were more willing to use strategies to manipulate their behaviors to appear truthful, while innocent participants said they would behave naturally. Juveniles were somewhat more likely to engage in deceitful responses and they agreed less with stereotypical cues of deception than adults. Juveniles may be worse at differentiating between truthful and deceptive behaviors that police officers observe for, which may put them at risk of being mistakenly judged as guilty in a police interview.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Author dc:creator

• Bettens, Talley

Contributors dc:contributor

• Warren, Amye
• Ferrier, David E.; Shelton, Jill
• College of Arts and Sciences

• Police questioning
• Reid technique

Licence

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language

English, eng

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholar.utc.edu/theses/699

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholar.utc.edu:theses-1863