Doctoral Dissertation Research: Interrogating Psychopathic Suspects: Confessions, Deception and Cues to Guilt

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This study examines the processes surrounding investigative interviewing and interrogation, by testing approaches founded in research on strategies of truth telling and deceiving. Participants in this experiment will be asked to watch videotapes of former criminal defendants in interrogations or pre-interrogation interviews conducted by actual police detectives denying involvement in crimes which they either have or have not committed or confessing to crimes which they have or have not committed. The participants will then be asked to make determinations of the suspects' credibility and veracity during the respective phases of the interrogation process.This study differed from previous research in that it investigates the possibility that psychopathic personality moderates a suspect's ability to evade detection while being mendacious. Videotapes will also be coded to determine whether psychopaths differ from nonpsychopaths in their verbal and nonverbal cues while being deceptive. In line with the extant literature, it is hypothesized that a) psychopathic individuals will display verbal and nonverbal cues while lying which differ from nonpsychopathic individuals, b) psychopathy will have a moderating effect on a participant's veracity judgments such that psychopathic individuals will more often be judged as truthful when denying involvement in the crimes they committed, and c) psychopathy will moderate participants' veracity judgments such that the false confessions provided by psychopathic individuals will be seen as more believable than false confessions provided by nonpsychopathic individuals. It is believed that the results of this study will enhance the theoretical understanding of deceptive presentations as well as provide important information to investigative practitioners.