Detecting Lies and Deception
Q. Is the polygraph a valid instrument for lie detection? Why or why not?
A. No. Scientists remain skeptical about the use of polygraph in lie detection as it cannot differentiate between guilt and other negative emotions such as feat, anger, or embarrassment.
Q. What is the primary purpose of the Miranda warnings (rights)?
A. To protect suspects from conditions that might give rise to unfounded confession.
Q. What is voir dire process and its main goal?
A. Pretrial legal proceeding mandated by federal or state statute in which judge and/or attorneys formally examine groups of prospective jurors (venire)
General goal is to determine and remove jurors who are prejudiced against objective consideration of case facts and application of the law.
Q. What is a plea bargain and what tension does it reflect between goals in the legal system?
A. Process in which a defendant agrees to plead guilty in exchange for some concession from prosecutor, typically involving reduction in type or number of charges and/or recommended sentencing. Represents tension between truth and conflict resolution.
Q. Name three of seven goals of punishment identified by psychologists.
A.
1. General Deterrence
2. Individual Deterrence
3. Incapacitation (to protect public from felon while incarcerated)
4. Retribution (offenders shouldn't benefit from crime, should receive just desserts)
5. Moral outrage (punishment as means of catharsis for society)
6. Rehabilitation (to heal offenders and help them adopt new skills, values, lifestyle)
7. Restitution (Wrongdoers should compensate victims for their damages and losses)
Q. What is truth/lie bias?
A. People generally have a truth bias (biased toward judging statements as being truthful).
Law enforcement have a lie bias– biased toward judging statements as lies, even when they are true.
Q. Identify three personal risk factors for false confessions.
A.
1. Youth and Inexperience
2. Low IQ or other cognitive deficiencies
3. Highly compliant or suggestible personalities (histrionic personality disorder, borderline pd)
4. History of mental illness
5. Shock, grief, and other transient emotional states
Q. What is jury representativeness and why is it important to the legal process?
A. Extent to which jury contains a representative cross section of community and its standards. Important because enhances procedural justice.
Q. In the context of plea bargaining, what are two primary reasons that an individual would plead guilty?
A.
1) because the likelihood of conviction is high
2) because if convicted, they would face lengthy sentences
Q. What was the original goal of prisons and what evidence do we have of how well this goal is being served?
A. Prisons originally designed for rehabilitation (hence correctional institutions) but given high rates of recidivism it is clear that this goal is not being achieved given current system.
Q. What are the three primary types of methods used in lie detection?
Techniques include:
1) Arousal-based Methods (e.g., polygraph)
2) Cognitive Methods (e.g., induce cognitive load, strategic use of evidence approach)
3) Brain-based Methods (e.g., neuroimaging using fMRI and brain fingerprinting using EEG to look at patterns of brain activity when truth-telling vs. lying.)
Q. What are three examples of interrogation techniques known to contribute to increased risk for false confessions?
A. Among interrogation techniques that increase risk for false confession are:
1) prolonged social isolation
2) confronting a suspect and expressing a belief in his or guilt
3) exaggerating or fabricating evidence against suspect
4) offering psychological and moral justification for the offense
Q. What is the story model and what implications does it have for juror decision making?
A. Model of decision making which posits that a core cognitive process in juror decision making is the construction of a story or narrative summary of events.
Good lawyers know this and make it their task to convince the jury why their story, and not their opponent's story is the right one. The lawyer with the best story wins.
Q. What is exculpatory evidence? Define and provide an example.
A. Evidence that tends to show defendant not guilty or suggests that prosecution witnesses are not credible. (e.g., DNA/fingerprint evidence not matching suspect)
Q. What is the death qualification?
A. In cases in which the prosecutor seeks the death penalty, prospective jurors are required to answer questions about their attitudes toward capital punishment. This procedure is known as the death qualification.
Q. What is a key ethical consideration in use of brain-based lie detection methods?
A. Some have pondered whether these practices (fMRI and EEG brain fingerprinting) constitute a “search” of the brain that should be governed by the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure.
What are the three types of false confessions?
A.
1. Compliant: seek notoriety, desire to cleanse themselves of guilt feelings from previous wrongdoings, want to protect the real criminal, and have difficulty distinguishing fact from fiction.
2. Coercive: suspect is induced to comply with the interrogator’s demands to make an incriminating statement.
3. Internalized: suspects confess because they come to believe that they have committed the crime.
Q. What is Challenge for cause? Define and provide two examples.
A. Challenge for Cause: In any trial, each side can claim that particular jurors (unlimited number) should be excluded because they are inflexibly biased.
Examples include:
Q. What is overconfidence bias and how does it influence plea bargaining?
A. Bias on part of defendants and their attorneys to believe (incorrectly) that they have a chance to win at trial, leading them to reject reasonable offers from prosecutors.
Q. What are aggravating and mitigating factors in capital punishment and two examples of each?
A. Aggravating factors are elements of the crime that make the defendant more likely to receive a death sentence (e.g., murder kidnapping, torturous murder, history of violence, etc.)
Mitigating factors are elements of the defendant’s background or the crime that make life imprisonment the more appropriate verdict (e.g., mental retardation, no prior record, extreme emotion, etc.)
Q. What is the Pinocchio effect and what type of lie detection method is this?
A. Using thermographic methods, researchers have determined that when a person lies their nose and area around their eyes actually heats up. This is a psychophsyiological, arousal-based method.
Q. What is illusory causation and how does it relate to recording interrogations?
A. The tendency to attribute causation to one stimulus because it is more conspicuous than others.
Concerns recording of interrogations--camera perspective matters:
focused on suspect=observers perceive confession as voluntary
equal focus on suspect and interrogator=observers more attuned to situational pressures exerted by interrogator
Q. What are the three primary personality and attitudinal characteristics correlated with verdicts and in what ways do they shape them?
A.
1) Authoritarianism= adherence to traditional values, identify with and submit to powerful figures, more likely to convict
2) Need for cognition=extent to which individuals enjoy effortful cognitive work, more carefully examine expert testimony and attentive to validity of research
3) Trust in the legal system=those with higher levels fo trust in legal system more likely to convict because confident that defendant is actual perp.
Q. What are three main purposes of a trial?
A.
1. The trial as a search for the truth (assumes that what really happened can be clearly ascertained)
2. The trial as a test of credibility (acknowledges that facts and evidence biased and must be weighed)
3. The trial as a conflict-resolving ritual (removes primary attention from concept of doing justice to creating a sense that justice is being done)
Q. Differentiate utilitarian and retributive approaches to punishment and identify which is more common.
A. Utilitarian (most punishment goals fall into this category)=intended to accomplish a useful outcome, such as compensating the victim, deterring crime, or incapacitating or rehabilitating the defendant.
Retributive=looking back at what offender did wrong and deciding what they deserve as a result (moral outrage and retribution)