Examining police officers' response bias in judging veracity

Deception detection research has shown that, in judging veracity, police officers are less truth biased than non-officers. However, previous researchers have normally used videotaped statements where an unknown (but presumably large) number of stereotypical or real deception cues are displayed by the senders. We examined non-officers, novice officers, and experienced officers’ response tendencies in a more controlled situation where cue availability was severely restricted.

We used written vignettes describing either police-related or police-unrelated scenarios where the protagonist denied having committed a misdeed. Each vignette contained only two pieces of relevant information, one suggesting that the protagonist was lying and one suggesting that she or he was telling the truth.

Officers made fewer truth judgments than non-officers in judging police-relevant vignettes, but not in judging police-irrelevant vignettes. Both novice and experienced officers had greater judgmental confidence than non-officers.

The findings are consistent with the Adaptive Lie Detection Theory (ALIED). Future research should continue to explore how the police relevance of the situation or task at hand influences novice and experienced officers’ veracity judgments.