Abstract
The purpose of this research was to investigate the efficacy of a novel information gathering technique for detecting truthful and deceptive verbal accounts in interview settings. Five police officers were trained to use each of the three interview techniques, namely tactical, strategic and early. Post‐training, each interviewed 30 mock suspects (five truth tellers and five liars in each interview condition) who had taken part in an immersive interactive computer game, competing as either a terrorist (deceiver) or a builder (truth tellers). Post‐interview, officers completed a questionnaire designed to collect veracity judgments, confidence levels and the type of interviewee behaviour that had influenced their veracity decision. Results revealed a significant advantage for detecting both deceivers and truth tellers using our new tactical procedure (67% and 74% accuracy, respectively) versus the strategic (54% and 42%) and early (53% and 47%) interviews. Additionally, when interviewing tactically, not only were interviewers more confident in their judgments but they also reported using verbal behaviour more to inform their judgments. We introduce the new tactical approach to interviewing and discuss our findings, suggesting why tactical interviewing is effective for detecting verbal deception. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.