Educing Information: Interrogation - National Intelligence University

methods are potentially valuable tools in some settings, the human collector
remains the most deployable and adaptable tool that can be put in the field.
Moreover, pragmatic considerations frequently make application of more complex
or elaborate technologies impractical or impossible. The review also suggests
additional research to enhance the ability to detect deception.
Cues to Deception
Beliefs vs. Reality
People who adopt the belief that there are reliable cues to deception are
frequently incorrect. Significant research has studied people’s beliefs about
indicators that someone is being deceptive and their own attitudes and confidence
about their personal ability to be deceptive. A summary of 57 studies examining
beliefs about nonverbal cues to deception indicated that many people do not
actually know what they think they know: in other words, their beliefs are
just as often wrong as they are right. 36 These patterns of erroneous beliefs are
widespread and are found equally among professional interrogators/investigators
and novices. 7,37-40
Research into beliefs and attitudes about deception may have value for
predicting how people might try to conceal deception on the basis of their own
beliefs about cues to deception. This research may also facilitate the identification
of erroneous beliefs that intelligence collectors may hold and that should be
corrected in training. However, the study of attitudes and beliefs does not in
itself provide information on which cues to deception actually work. Therefore,
this line of research may at best provide indirect support to the development of
effective and reliable methods for detecting deception.
Most behavioral research discusses indicators of deception in terms of
nonverbal, paralinguistic, and verbal behaviors. The literature also contains global
judgments of behavior that may potentially have some utility.
Nonverbal Behavioral Cues
Most nonverbal cues to deception do not appear useful. To succeed at
deception, individuals must control the information that they provide. People can
generally exercise control over what they say; therefore, verbal output is subject
to considerable crafting on the part of the individual attempting to be deceptive.
The literature assumes that nonverbal behavior is more likely to fall outside a
subject’s full awareness and thus may provide a better source of cues for detecting
deception. (Yet, as noted below, verbal cues may actually offer some insight.) For
the purposes of this review, nonverbal behaviors encompass all those observable
behaviors that may or may not accompany language, such as body movements,
gestures, posture, eye gaze, etc.
A recent extensive review of the literature compiled the results from 116
research reports involving 120 independent subject samples. 41 This analysis
identified 158 cues to deception, but indicated that most of the nonverbal
behaviors studied proved ineffective and unreliable as indicators. Popularly held
47