Evidence, Strategic Use of

Counterinterrogation Strategies

The core premise of the SUE technique is that liars and truth-tellers have different strategies to convince, and these differences can be exploited in order to create cues to deception. These strategies, termed counterinterrogation strategies, have been examined in different ways. First, theoretical work has connected these strategies to basic behavioral approaches to cope with threatening situations.

Second, studies have empirically examined suspects' strategies during interrogations. The typical methodology of such studies is the mock crime approach, in which some participants are asked to commit a staged transgression, whereas others engage in some innocuous act. For example, some participants (liars) may be asked to go to a room and steal an object, whereas others (truth-tellers) are asked to go to the same room to simply deliver an object. Then, they are all told that an object was stolen from that room, and their task is to deny involvement in the theft (some deceptively, others truthfully). Before their interview, participants are asked to report their primary strategy for convincing the interviewer of their innocence.

Studies on counterinterrogation strategies show that liars' and truth-tellers' strategies differ, particularly with regard to information management (i.e., the content of the story that they plan to provide). The strategy most frequently reported by innocent people is to simply tell the truth like it happened. This might seem trivial, but it makes sense from the perspective of psychological theory. In particular, the behavior of innocent people is in line with naïve beliefs about justice. The belief in a just world (BJW) sociopsychological theory posits that people have trust in the fairness in the world. They believe that bad things happen to bad people, and good things happen to good people. In other words, if individuals are innocent, they may believe that they have nothing to fear by being forthcoming because the world is ultimately a fair place.

In contrast, guilty suspects face more complicated considerations regarding what information to convey. Liars who aim to cover up some form of transgression must suppress the critical information about the commission of the act in question. However, in order to appear credible, they need to offer an account in place of the truth. Providing false information to conceal one's action (e.g., claiming that one never visited place X, when one in fact did) entails a risk; if the interviewer holds information that the suspect visited this place, the suspect's credibility is in jeopardy.

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