shown that establishing rapport (through use of active listening for example) before and
during a suspect interview has a significant, positive impact on the validity and volume of
information elicited (Vallano et al., 2015; Alison & Alison, 2017). This focus on developing
rapport with the suspect, allowing them to freely speak and focusing on asking open-ended
follow-up questions allows for interviewers to gather a wealth of information which can be
used in future interviews and allow for a more strategic use of evidence during the
interviewing process (Vrij et al., 2014).
References
Alison, L., & Alison, E. (2017). Revenge versus rapport: Interrogation, terrorism, and
torture. American psychologist, 72(3), 266.
Evans, J. R., Michael, S. W., Meissner, C. A., & Brandon, S. E. (2013). Validating a new
assessment method for deception detection: Introducing a Psychologically Based
Credibility Assessment Tool. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and
Cognition, 2(1), 33-41.
Meissner, C. A., Kelly, C. E., & Woestehoff, S. A. (2015). Improving the Effectiveness of
Suspect Interrogations. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 11(November),
211–233.
Reid, J. E., & Arther, R. O. (1953). Behavior symptoms of lie-detector subjects. Journal of
Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Science, 44, 104-108.
Vallano, J. P., & Schreiber Compo, N. S. (2015). Rapport-building with cooperative
witnesses and criminal suspects: A theoretical and empirical review. Psychology, Public
Policy, and Law, 21, 85-99.
Vrij, A. (2019). Deception and truth detection when analyzing nonverbal and verbal
cues. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 33(2), 160-167.
Vrij, A., Hope, L., & Fisher, R. P. (2014). Eliciting Reliable Information in Investigative
Interviews. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1(1), 129–136.
Vrij, A., Mann, S., Kristen, S., & Fisher, R. P. (2007). Cues to deception and ability to detect
lies as a function of police inter- view styles. Law and Human Behavior, 31, 499-518.
Advice 4: Imposing Cognitive Load to Detect Deceit
Cognitive load refers to how much mental effort it takes to perform a task. Research has
found that lying takes more mental effort then telling the truth. This is due to factors such as
the liar having to formulate a believable story, monitor what they have said to avoid
contradicting themselves, and monitoring the behaviour of the other. It is therefore
suggested that the interviewer should attempt to impose cognitive load onto a suspect whilst
they are recalling details to reduce deception and make it easier to spot. The most effective
ways of imposing this mental strain are getting the suspect to tell the story in reverse (i.e
