About
108
Publications
163,996
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
2,429
Citations
Introduction
Jaume Masip, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Psychology and Anthropology at the University of Salamanca, Spain. He regularly teaches Legal Psychology and conducts research on deception detection.
Additional affiliations
Position
- Collaborator
October 2008 - present
October 2004 - October 2008
Publications
Publications (108)
Hundreds of experiments have examined people’s ability to distinguish truths from lies. Meta-analyses suggest that the findings from larger scale experiments converge and that findings discrepant from the meta-analytic average of 54% occur in only smaller experiments. Study size (number of data points, or total number of judgments) is a joint funct...
Long before experimental psychology, religious writers, orators, and playwrights described examples of lie detection based on the verbal content of statements. Legal scholars collected evidence from individual cases and systematized them as “rules of evidence”. Some of these resemble content cues used in contemporary research, while others point to...
The verifiability of a suspect's alibi is often interpreted as a sign of innocence. Because the police resources are limited, verifiability could be used to dismiss suspects of minor offenses. We examined whether alibi verifiability actually indicates innocence for minor crimes. In Experiment 1, participants imagined they were guilty or innocent su...
Researchers worldwide have extensively explored the factors contributing to wrongful convictions and the characteristics of individuals affected by these miscarriages of justice for over a century. Despite these global efforts, limited research has been conducted on this issue in Spain. This study seeks to address this gap. We trained coders to ass...
PROJECT ALETHEIA (https://project-aletheia.org). -
The Behavior Analysis Interview (BAI) is part of the Reid Technique of interviewing and interrogation, widely used by law enforcement to distinguish between innocent and guilty individuals. The BAI is based on a set of behavior-provoking questions designed to elicit different reactions from guilt...
Over the past decades, the psychological science has accumulated a large corpus of empirical knowledge about police interviews, deception detection, and suspects’ confessions. However, it is unclear whether European police forces’ practices and beliefs are consistent with recommendations derived from this empirical literature. The study described i...
Laboratory-based deception-detection experiments often fail to capture the features of everyday life lie detection among ordinary citizens. In this study, we examined how people [try to] detect deception in real life. Over 10 weeks, every time the participants felt they had detected a lie, they filled in an online survey. Results show that, in ever...
For more than a century, verbal content cues to deception have been investigated to assess the credibility of statements in judicial contexts. Among the many cues investigated, Criteria-based Content Analysis (CBCA) and criteria based on the reality monitoring (RM) approach have been most prominent. However, research with these cues used as ‘tools’...
Purpose
Little research exists on the influence of emotion in forensic settings. To start filling this gap, we used a hypothetical interrogation scenario to examine the effects of emotional state on judgement, decision making, and information‐processing style across two separate experiments.
Methods
The participants were induced a specific emotion...
Infocop
http://www.infocop.es/view_article.asp?id=15174&cat=52
Spanish translation of Masip, J (2017). Deception detection: State o/ the art and
future prospects. Psicothema, 29(2), 149-159. https://doi.org/10. 7334/psicothema2017.34
Reprint of:
Blandón-Gitlin, I., López, R. M., Masip, J., & Fenn, E. (2017). Cognición, emoción y mentira: Implicaciones para detectar el engaño [Cognition, emotion, and lying: Implications to detect deception]. Anuario de Psicología Jurídica, 27, 95-106. doi:10.1016/j.apj.2017.02.004
Background:
Research shows that people believe deception can be detected from behavioral cues despite their past experience of detecting lies from non-behavioral, contextual information (evidence, third-person reports, etc.). However, in previous research, the question about beliefs was necessarily general, while the question about revealing infor...
Deception scholars have argued that increasing the liar’s cognitive system artificially can produce deception cues. However, if too much load is imposed, the truth tellers’ performance can also be impaired. To address this issue, we designed a veracity task that incorporated a secondary task to increase cognitive load gradually. Also, because decep...
Denault, V., Plusquellec, P., Jupe, L. M., St-Yves, M., Dunbar, N. E., Hartwig, M., … van Koppen, P. J. (2020). L’analyse de la communication non verbale: Les dangers de la pseudoscience en contextes de sécurité et de justice [The analysis of nonverbal communication: The dangers of pseudoscience in security and justice contexts]. Revue internationa...
For security and justice professionals (e.g., police officers, lawyers, judges), the thousands of peer-reviewed articles on nonverbal communication represent important sources of knowledge. However, despite the scope of the scientific work carried out on this subject, professionals can turn to programs, methods, and approaches that fail to reflect...
Deception detection is a topic covered in many psychology and communication courses. We designed and implemented an engaging class activity to facilitate the students’ learning of several key concepts related to sender and receiver variability in lie detection. The pedagogical effectiveness of the activity was measured. In line with previous resear...
Para los profesionales de la seguridad y la justicia (policías, abogados, jueces), los miles de artículos revisados por pares sobre comunicación no verbal representan fuentes importantes de conocimiento. Sin embargo, a pesar del alcance del trabajo científico realizado sobre este tema, los profesionales pueden recurrir a programas, métodos y enfoqu...
Previous research has shown that in real-life situations people detect lies mostly from non-behavioral information (e.g., physical evidence, third-party information, confessions…) rather than from behavioral cues. Novotny et al. (J Nonverbal Behav 42:41–52, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-017-0263-2) argued that while lies are detected primari...
Since its introduction into the field of deception detection, the verbal channel has become a rapidly growing area of research. The basic assumption is that liars differ from truth tellers in their verbal behaviour, making it possible to classify them by inspecting their verbal accounts. However, as noted in conferences and in private communication...
People believe others are telling the truth more often than they believe others are lying. This is the truth bias. While some theories have seen the bias as an uncontrollable error or default, the adaptive lie detector theory, or ALIED (Street, 2015), argues that the bias is a result of making an informed and adaptive judgment in a situation where...
This chapter promotes a shift toward a theory-driven approach to lie detection research. It does so by exploring why people show a bias to believe and disbelieve others. The adaptive lie detector theory, or ALIED, claims that these biases are adaptive and functional, rather than a sign of error. Recent tests of ALIED theory are briefly reviewed. Th...
Previous research has shown that inconsistencies across repeated interviews do not indicate deception because liars deliberately tend to repeat the same story. However, when a strategic interview approach that makes it difficult for liars to use the repeat strategy is used, both consistency and evasive answers differ significantly between truth tel...
Background:
Deception detection research has shown that, in judging veracity, police officers are less truth biased than non-officers. However, previous researchers have normally used videotaped statements where an unknown (but presumably large) number of stereotypical or real deception cues are displayed by the senders. We examined non-officers,...
This meta-analysis synthesizes research on interrater reliability of Criteria-Based Content Analysis (CBCA). CBCA is an important component of Statement Validity Assessment (SVA), a forensic procedure used in many countries to evaluate whether statements (e.g., of sexual abuse) are based on experienced or fabricated events. CBCA contains 19 verbal...
Background:
Deception detection has been a longstanding concern throughout human history. It has also interested scientists, who have explored psychological and behavioral differences between liars and truth tellers, as well as ways to improve detection accuracy.
Method:
In recent years, substantial advances have been made in the field. Some of...
Recientemente, la falta de evidencia en apoyo de la aproximación no verbal-emocional en detección de mentiras ha propiciado el desarrollo de la orientación cognitiva. Ésta sostiene que mentir es cognitivamente más complejo que decir la verdad y que un aumento artificial de la dificultad cognitiva durante una entrevista hará que el mentiroso muestre...
Previous deception research on repeated interviews found that liars are not less consistent than truth tellers, presumably because liars use a “repeat strategy” to be consistent across interviews. The goal of this study was to design an interview procedure to overcome this strategy. Innocent participants (truth tellers) and guilty participants (lia...
Meta-analyses reveal that behavioral differences between liars and truth tellers are small. To facilitate lie detection, researchers are currently developing interviewing approaches to increase these differences. Some of these approaches assume that lying is cognitively more difficult than truth telling; however, they are not based on specific cogn...
Deception detection research has shown that police officers are less truth-biased and make their veracity judgments with greater confidence than do nonofficers. Here we examined nonofficers, novice officers, and experienced officers' response bias, confidence, and generalized communicative suspicion. In Experiment 1, novice officers aligned with no...
This meta-analysis investigates linguistic cues to deception and whether these cues can be detected with computer programs. We integrated operational definitions for 79 cues from 44 studies where software had been used to identify linguistic deception cues. These cues were allocated to six research questions. As expected, the meta-analyses demonstr...
Tradicionalmente, la investigación en detección de mentiras ha asumido que, al mentir, el ser humano muestra espontáneamente indicios conductuales. Sin embargo, las recientes integraciones meta-analíticas constatan que tales indicios no abundan. Esto ha imprimido un cambio de rumbo en la investigación, que ha tomado dos vías distintas: (a) el desar...
La evidencia meta-analítica muestra que los indicadores conductuales de la mentira son escasos, poco diagnósticos y cambiantes. Esto ha propiciado un cambio de orientación en la investigación sobre detección de mentiras: ya no se trata de escudriñar atenta pero pasivamente al emisor de la comunicación en busca de indicadores conductuales reveladore...
People believe others are telling the truth more often than they actually are; this is called the truth bias. Surprisingly, when a speaker is judged at multiple points across their statement the truth bias declines. Previous claims argue this is evidence of a shift from (biased) heuristic processing to (reasoned) analytical processing. In four expe...
Research questions the validity of behavioral deception cues; however, people believe behavioral cues are reliable deception indicators. Police officers and community members indicated both how lies can be detected (beliefs), and how they discovered a lie in the past (revealing information). Officers did the latter twice, prompted with a profession...
El conocimiento del pasado de una disciplina es imprescindible para una comprensión adecuada de su presente. Sin embargo, los psicólogos sociales mainstream muestran cierto desinterés e ignorancia sobre el pasado de la psicología social. Esto puede deberse en parte al papel que juegan en su formación las historias “oficiales” de la disciplina. Así,...
A current focus in deception research is on developing cognitive-load approaches (CLAs) to detect deception. The aim is to improve lie detection with evidence-based and ecologically valid procedures. Although these approaches show great potential, research on cognitive processes or mechanisms explaining how they operate is lacking. Potential mechan...
In 2 studies we evaluated the efficiency of training raters with a short version of the Aberdeen Report Judgment Scales (ARJS-STV-S) in assessing the truthfulness of transcribed accounts. Participants told both truthful and deceptive accounts of either illegal or immoral actions. In the truthful accounts, the participants described their own misdee...
Over the years, people have searched for deception cues in the liar's behavior. However, the sender's incentives to lie might be more revealing than behavior. In Experiment 1, an incentive was developed that was predictive of lying. Judges with access to incentive information in addition to behavior achieved almost perfect lie/truth detection. This...
Previous research has shown that the Behavior Analysis Interview (BAI) indicators of guilt or innocence are merely commonsense notions. In this study, we examined whether this would lead suspects of a serious crime to try to manipulate their behavior during a BAI in order to look innocent. A serious crime was described to 74 undergraduates who were...
Inferring the thoughts and intentions of others is a difficult social judgment that requires keen attention to and a clear understanding of the speakers’ behaviours. This task is made all the more difficult when the speaker actively tries to mislead us. Surprisingly, even when we are aware of the potential for such deceit we tend to rate more state...
Research syntheses suggest that verbal cues are more diagnostic of deception than other cues. Recently, to avoid human judgmental biases, researchers have sought to find faster and more reliable methods to perform automatic content analyses of statements. However, diversity of methods and inconsistent findings do not present a clear picture of effe...
An active learning exercise was carried out in an eyewitness psychology course in which students first built up a facial composite of a famous person using the FACES software. Then, the students had to name the person depicted in each composite. The results of this exercise were then described by the instructor during a theoretical lecture about fa...
The Behaviour Analysis Interview (BAI) is an interview protocol designed to generate different reactions in guilty and innocent suspects. Masip et al. found that students had the same views about the guilt or innocence indicators of the BAI as the BAI proponents. This suggests that training in the BAI may only reinforce the trainees' pre-existing b...
Masip, J., Bethencourt, M., Lucas, G., Sánchez‐San Segundo, M. & Herrero, C. (2012). Deception detection from written accounts. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 53, 103–111.
Most research into deception detection in written accounts has been conducted on transcripts instead of written messages, and has focused on identifying valid verbal deceptio...
The Behaviour Analysis Interview (BAI) is an interview protocol developed by John E. Reid and Associates to generate different reactions in guilty and innocent suspects. Even though research has questioned the usefulness of the BAI protocol (Vrij et al., 2006), many law enforcement officials are trained in the BAI every year. Two studies were condu...
Masip, et al. (2009) conducted a study in which observers had to make truth-lie judgments at the beginning, middle, or end of a series of videotaped statements. They found a decline in truth judgments over time and explained this finding in terms of information processing mode. Recently, Elaad (2010) challenged this explanation and contended that t...
A content analysis of fair and unfair experiences described by students as customers of health care services was made. The way customers had been treated by the staff during the implementation of procedures, along with the information exchange between client and service providers turned out to have a strong impact on justice perception. An outstand...
Previous work has examined the relative valence (positivity or negativity) of ethnophaulisms (ethnic slurs) targeting European immigrants to the United States. However, this relied on contemporary judgments made by American researchers. The present study examined valence judgments made by citizens from the countries examined in previous work. Citiz...
Una labor esencial de la policía consiste en entrevistar a sospechosos. Sin embargo, éstos pueden mentir, por lo que la policía debe recibir formación en técnicas de entrevista y de detección de mentiras. Sin embargo, esta formación es escasa y deficiente. En este trabajo se examina un popular protocolo de entrevista policial en el que se ha entren...
Research has failed to show that training to detect deception substantially increases accuracy. Instead, training yields a stronger tendency to make judgments of deceptiveness. Normally, training programmes place a strong emphasis on deception and deception cues. This may lead observers to engage in a biased information seeking process wherein only...
Research on nonverbal detection of deception has normally been conducted by asking observers to judge the veracity of a number of videotaped communications. These video clips have typically been very short. Observers have a tendency to judge most of these statements as truthful. An experiment was conducted in which 52 participants (44 women, 8 men;...
Police officers hardly receive any training to detect deception. Furthermore, the Reid Technique (which is the most popular training program to detect deception) relies on deception indicators that are wrong according to the scientific evidence, is based on common sense beliefs, does not help separate truths from lies, and may lead suspects to make...
In this paper, the empirical research on police officers’ ability to distinguish between truths and lies is reviewed. The officers’ detection ability is very poor and similar to that of lay persons. In addition, police officers tend to judge the statements as deceptive. The influence that police experience and deception-detection training may have...
Si bien el abuso sexual infantil es menos frecuente que otros tipos de maltrato, diversos países, entre los cuales se encuentra España, han registrado un notable incremento de denuncias a lo largo de las últimas décadas. Sus importantes secuelas exigen que se tomen medidas. Sin embargo, una dificultad intrínseca a este tipo de abuso es el problema...
Knowing the past of a discipline is essential to fully understand its present. However, mainstream social psychologists show some lack of interest and poor knowledge about the past of social psychology. This might be a result of the role that “official” histories of the discipline play in their education. Indeed, the historical period covered by th...
Research into the nonverbal detection of deception has typically been conducted by asking observers to judge whether a number of videotaped statements are truthful or deceptive. In most cases, the behavioural segments used in this research have been very short. A typical result is that observers tend to judge the statements as truthful (truth bias)...
Reviews the book The Detection of Deception in Forensic Contexts by Pär-Anders Granhag and Leif Strömwall (see record 2005-05153-000 ). The book is divided into three major parts. In the first part, "Lie detection techniques," nonverbal, verbal, and polygraphic lie-detection approaches are described. This part of the book is closed by highly favora...
This paper summarises the authors’ research into police officers’ and non-officers’ detection of deceit. In the first experiment officers’ accuracy in detecting deceptive statements was the same as that of non-officers; however, the latter outperformed the police sample in detecting truthful accounts. This was due to the fact that the officers made...
This article reports two worldwide studies of stereotypes about liars. These studies are carried out in 75 different countries and 43 different languages. In Study 1, participants respond to the open-ended question “How can you tell when people are lying?” In Study 2, participants complete a questionnaire about lying. These two studies reveal a dom...
Aavik Maher M Abu-Hilal Ahmad- [...]
Zhang
This article reports two worldwide studies of stereotypes about liars. These studies are carried out in 75 different countries and 43 different languages. In Study 1, participants respond to the open-ended question “How can you tell when people are lying?” In Study 2, participants complete a questionnaire about lying. These two studies reveal a dom...
El presente texto no sólo trata los temas típicos de la psicología jurídica, sino que los amplía con otros, como la conducencia de la norma jurídica, a menudo olvidados pero que son de innegable importancia. Además de unos capítulos introductorios de ámbito general sobre la naturaleza y la historia de la psicología jurídica, se incluyen una serie d...
Research shows that police officers are no more accurate than non-officers in discerning between truthful and deceptive statements, but more biased than non-officers to judge statements as deceptive. This was labeled by Meissner and Kassin (2002) as the investigator bias effect. A likely explanation could be that, since officers are normally involv...
One of the verbal approaches to the detection of deceit is based on research on human memory that tries to identify the characteristics that differentiate between internal and external memories (reality monitoring). This approach has attempted to extrapolate the contributions of reality monitoring (RM) research to the deception area. In this paper,...
There are a series of popular beliefs about the behavioural indicators of deception that are not supported by empirical research. A number of “self-help” books are contributing to the spreading of these beliefs. In this article, several decades of psychological and communication research on the non-verbal detection of deception are reviewed. Contra...
Existe una serie de creencias populares sobre los indicadores conductuales del engaño que no se ven corroboradas por la evidencia empírica. Determinados libros “de autoayuda” contribuyen a la difusión de las mismas. En este trabajo se revisan varias décadas de investigación en psicología y comunicación sobre la detección no-verbal del engaño. Al co...
A study was conducted to examine Spanish police officers’ and nonofficers’ lie- and truth-detection accuracy, as well as their estimated detection ability. The participants were 121 police officers and 146 undergraduates who watched videotaped truthful and deceptive statements. They had to indicate: (1) whether each statement was truthful or decept...
The babyface overgeneralization effect is perceiving that people whose facial features resemble those of children have childlike traits, and treating them accordingly. This experiment sought to replicate the US findings with a South-European sample, to examine the impact of facial maturity on impressions of truthfulness, and to examine the influenc...
In view of the relative disagreement among those studying deception as to how deception, the lie, or deceptive communication should be defined, an attempt is made to integrate the views of the most influential scholars in the field in order to formulate a comprehensive and clear-cut definition of deception. The starting point is Coleman and Kay’s (...
Los analizadores de la tensión vocal son dispositivos que supuestamente detectan la ausencia de ciertos microtemblores en la voz, lo que sería indicativo de que el sujeto está experimentando tensión. Desde esta perspectiva se asume además que todo mentiroso está tenso, por lo que los analizadores de la tensión vocal se comercializan como detectores...
La investigación empírica realizada desde la aproximación no-verbal o de los correlatos conductuales para la evaluación de la credibilidad muestra que los índices de precisión de los observadores que deben discriminar entre declaraciones verdaderas y falsas se sitúa apenas por encima del nivel de azar. Esto contrasta con los índices alcanzados medi...
Se llevaron a cabo tres experimentos para responder a la pregunta "¿qué añade la psicología al sentido común?". En el primer experimento se aplicó a policías, estudiantes de criminología y estudiantes de psicología un cuestionario con afirmaciones consolidadas en psicología jurídica y social para que las juzgaran según el sentido común. Los estudia...