Paul J. Taylor

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Lancaster University

We present a new robust signal for detecting deception: full body motion. Previous work on detecting deception from body movement has relied either on human judges or on specific gestures (such as fidgeting or gaze aversion) that are coded or rated by humans. The results are characterized by inconsistent and often contradictory findings, with small...

This research examined the coordination of interrogator and suspects' verbal behavior in interrogations. Sixty-four police interrogations were examined at the aggregate and utterance level using a measure of verbal mimicry known as Language Style Matching. Analyses revealed an interaction between confession and the direction of language matching. I...

The act of conducting an insider attack carries with it cognitive and social challenges that may affect an offender's day-to-day work behavior. We test this hypothesis by examining the language used in e-mails that were sent as part of a 6-hr workplace simulation. The simulation involved participants (N = 54) examining databases and exchanging info...

Although researchers know much about the causes of aggression, they know surprisingly little about how aggression leads to violence or how violence is controlled. To explore the microregulation of violence, we conducted a systematic behavioral analysis of footage from closed-circuit television surveillance of public spaces. Using 42 incidents invol...

This research examines cultural differences in negotiators' responses to persuasive arguments in crisis (hostage) negotiations over time. Using a new method of examining cue-response patterns, the authors examined 25 crisis negotiations in which police negotiators interacted with perpetrators from low-context (LC) or high-context (HC) cultures. Com...

Cross cultural differences in behavioral and verbal norms and expectations can undermine credibility, often triggering a lie bias which can result in false convictions. However, current understanding is heavily North American and Western European centric, hence how individuals from non-western cultures infer veracity is not well understood. We repo...

The proliferation of digital data has provided new means to identify people from the way they behave and interact with technologies. This article provides the first systematic review of reviews (n = 41) on digital behavioural biometrics to ascertain what can be inferred about identity from digital sources, and “boundaries” to their applications. Ou...

A significant body of research has investigated potential correlates of deception and bodily behavior. The vast majority of these studies consider discrete, subjectively coded bodily movements such as specific hand or head gestures. Such studies fail to consider quantitative aspects of body movement such as the precise movement direction, magnitude...

Introduction The verbal deception literature is largely based upon North American and Western European monolingual English speaker interactions. This paper extends this literature by comparing the verbal behaviors of 88 south Asian bilinguals, conversing in either first (Hindi) or second (English) languages, and 48 British monolinguals conversing i...

Objective Develop and investigate the potential of a remote, computer-mediated and synchronous text-based triage, which we refer to as InSort, for quickly highlighting persons of interest after an insider attack. Background Insiders maliciously exploit legitimate access to impair the confidentiality and integrity of organizations. The globalisatio...

Efforts to infer personality from digital footprints have focused on behavioral stability at the trait level without considering situational dependency. We repeated a classic study of intraindividual consistency with secondary data (five data sets) containing 28,692 days of smartphone usage from 780 people. Using per-app measures of pickup frequenc...

Within studies of extremism, extremist and non-extremist messages are generally treated as two sets of competing constructed narratives. However, some research has argued that these message forms are not dichotomous and that non-extremist narratives demonstrate overlap with extremist master narratives. The aim of this paper is to test this hypothes...

Efforts to infer personality from digital footprints have focused on behavioral stability at the trait level without considering situational dependency. We repeat Shoda, Mischel, and Wright’s (1994) classic study of intraindividual consistency with data on 28,692 days of smartphone usage by 780 people. Using per app measures of ‘pickup’ frequency a...

Reports about repeated experiences tend to include more schematic information than information about specific instances. However, investigators in both forensic and intelligence settings typically seek specific over general information. We tested a multi-method interviewing format (MMIF) to facilitate recall and particularisation of repeated events...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1098/rsos.170128.].

Although oral hygiene is known to impact self-confidence and self-esteem, little is known about how it influences our interpersonal behavior. Using a wearable, multi-sensor device, we examined differences in consumers’ individual and interpersonal confidence after they had or had not brushed their teeth. Students (N = 140) completed nine one-to-one...

In information gathering interviews, follow‐up questions are asked to clarify and extend initial witness accounts. Across two experiments, we examined the efficacy of open‐ended questions following an account about a multi‐perpetrator event. In Experiment 1, 50 mock‐witnesses used the timeline technique or a free recall format to provide an initial...

This paper uses a data-driven approach to identify the psychological factors that underlie the array of strategies that people use to hide their deceit. Two hundred and nine participants told two lies and two truths and then completed a self-report scale that elicited their experiences when deceiving. A factor analysis of responses produced four fa...

We examined the psychological and behavioral consequences of making a communication error in expressive crisis negotiations and instrumental suspect interviews. During crisis negotiation ( n = 133) or suspect interview ( n = 68) training, Dutch police and probation officers received preparation material that led them to make a factual, judgment, or...

Objective: Violence perpetrated by groups has been proposed to result from processes that include deindividuation, instrumental responses to victim resistance, and leader–follower dynamics. Here we compare the explanatory merit of these accounts by analyzing the sequential patterns of behaviors that occurred in 71 accounts of multiple perpetrator r...

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...

We present a new signal for detecting deception: full body motion. Previous work on detecting deception from body movement has relied either on human judges or on specific gestures (such as fidgeting or gaze aversion) that are coded by humans. While this research has helped to build the foundation of the field, results are often characterized by in...

Language style matching (LSM) is a technique in behavioural analytics which assess the stylistic similarities in language use across groups and individuals. The procedure targets the similarity of functions words, analysing the way people use language rather than the content. Function words consist of pronouns, articles, conjunctions, prepositions,...

It has long been recognised that terrorists make use of the internet as one of many means through which to further their cause. This use of the internet has fuelled a large number of studies seeking to understand terrorists' use of online environments. This chapter provides an overview of current understandings of online terrorist behavior, coupled...

Drawing on theories of mimicry as a schema-driven process, we tested whether the degree of verbal mimicry is dependent on the congruence between interactants’ power dynamic (symmetric vs. asymmetric), task type (cooperative vs. competitive) and interaction context (negotiation vs. social). Experiment 1 found higher verbal mimicry amongst dyads who...

Drawing on theories of mimicry as a schema-driven process, we tested whether the degree of verbal mimicry is dependent on the congruence between interactants’ power dynamic (symmetric vs. asymmetric), task type (cooperative vs. competitive) and interaction context (negotiation vs. social). Experiment 1 found higher verbal mimicry amongst dyads who...

The role of information context, judgment perspective and cue type on the "accuracy" of first impressions of another's Big5 personality was studied in three phases of data collection (n = 173). Accurate judgments were defined as the level of agreement between a target person's aggregated personality score (i.e., average of self and informant rating...

General Audience Summary Reliable information is critical for investigations in forensic and security settings; however, obtaining reliable information for complex events can be challenging. In this study, we extend the timeline technique, which uses an innovative and interactive procedure where events are reported on a physical timeline. To facili...

Obtaining detailed accounts from individuals who have witnessed complex events under challenging encoding conditions presents a difficulty for investigators. In the present research, participants (N = 132) reported their recall of an event witnessed under full or divided attention using a timeline reporting format. Extending the timeline technique...

In this tribute to the 2012 recipient of the IACM's Jeffrey Rubin's Theory‐to‐Practice Award, we celebrate the work of Ellen Giebels. We highlight her groundbreaking research on influence tactics in crisis negotiations and other high‐stakes conflict situations, showing how her focus on theoretical foundations and careful design has delivered contri...

It has long been recognised that terrorists make use of the internet as one of many means through which to further their cause. This use of the internet has fuelled a large number of studies seeking to understand terrorists’ use of online environments. This chapter provides an overview of current understandings of online terrorist behavior, coupled...

It has long been recognised that terrorists make use of the internet as one of many means through which to further their cause. This use of the internet has fuelled a large number of studies seeking to understand terrorists' use of online environments. This chapter provides an overview of current understandings of online terrorist behavior, coupled...

This paper presents a multimodal simulation system, project-SENSE, that combines virtual reality and full-body motion capture technologies with real-time verbal and nonverbal communication. We introduce the technical setup and employed hardware and software of a first prototype. We discuss the capabilities of the system for the investigation of coo...

Two experiments explore the effect of law enforcement officers’ communication errors and their response strategies on a suspect’s trust in the officer; established rapport and hostility; and, the amount and quality of information shared. Students were questioned online by an exam board member about exam fraud (Nstudy1 = 188) or by a police negotiat...

Change in our language when deceiving is attributable to differences in the affective and cognitive experience of lying compared to truth telling, yet these experiences are also subject to substantial individual differences. On the basis of previous evidence of cultural differences in self-construal and remembering, we predicted and found evidence...

A range of studies have examined what should be said and done in crisis negotiations. Yet, no study to date has considered what happens when an error is made, how to respond to an error, and what the consequences of errors and responses might be on the negotiation process itself. To develop our understanding of errors, we conducted 11 semi-structur...

Global and national events in recent years have shown that social media, and particularly micro-blogging services such as Twitter, can be a force for good (e.g., Arab Spring) and harm (e.g., London riots). In both of these examples, social media played a key role in group formation and organisation, and in the coordination of the group’s subsequent...

This research examines how the cultural dimension of uncertainty avoidance-a person's (in)tolerance for uncertain or unknown situations-impacts communication alignment in crisis negotiations. We hypothesized that perpetrators high on uncertainty avoidance would respond better to negotiators who use formal language and legitimize their position with...

The present study examined the role of target and judge interaction demands on first impression accuracy (n=195). Specifically, the role of targets' self-presentation concerns and judges' information processing demands on accuracy for interpersonal traits (i.e., traits likely to be accentuated within an interpersonal context) and less interpersonal...

Geographic profiling (GP) is an investigative technique that involves predicting a serial offender’s home location (or some other anchor point) based on where he or she committed a crime. Although the use of GP in police investigations appears to be on the rise, little is known about the procedure and how it is used. To examine these issues, a surv...

This chapter discusses the importance of interpersonal trust in the creation of a safe work environment. It highlights that trust is important in increasing employee engagement in safety, willingness to comply with management requests, and propensity to take the initiative. The chapter commences with a definition of trust, explaining how it develop...

In this chapter, we discuss verbal lie detection and will argue that speech content can be revealing about deception. Starting with a section discussing the, in our view, myth that non-verbal behaviour would be more revealing about deception than speech, we then provide an overview of verbal lie detection tools currently used. This is followed by a...

Global and national events in recent years have shown that online social media can be a force for good (e.g., Arab Spring) and harm (e.g., the London riots). In both of these examples, social media played a key role in group formation and organization, and in the coordination of the group's subsequent collective actions (i.e., the move from rhetori...

While many studies show a positive relationship between verbal mimicry and negotiation success (e.g., Taylor & Thomas, 2008), a few recent studies have shown the opposite (Ireland & Henderson, 2014). In this paper we seek to resolve this discrepancy by testing, based on schema expectation theory, whether the benefits of verbal mimicry are dependent...

A significant body of literature has reported research on the potential correlates of deception and bodily behavior. The vast majority of these studies consider discrete bodily movements such as specific hand or head gestures. While differences in the number of such movements could be an indication of a subject's veracity, they account for only a s...

The cultural diversity of people encountered by front-line investigators has increased substantially over the last decade. Increasingly, investigators must try to resolve their suspicions by evaluating a person's behaviour through the lens of that person's social and cultural norms. In this chapter, we consider what is known about cross-cultural de...

We test the common assumption that information ‘rich’ contexts lead to more accurate personality judgments than information ‘lean’ contexts. Pairs of unacquainted students rendered judgments of one another’s personalities after interacting in one of three, increasingly rich, contexts: Internet ‘chat’, telephone, or face-to-face. Accuracy was assess...

Technologies that measure human nonverbal behavior have existed for some time, and their use in the analysis of social behavior has become more popular following the development of sensor technologies that record full-body movement. However, a standardized methodology to efficiently represent and analyze full-body motion is absent. In this article,...

Recent studies have sought to understand individuals’ motivations for terrorism through terrorist material content. To date, these studies have not capitalised on automated language analysis techniques, particularly those of corpus linguistics. In this paper, we demonstrate how applying three corpus-linguistic techniques to extremist statements can...

Although researchers know a great deal about persuasive messages that encourage terrorism, they know far less about persuasive messages that denounce terrorism and little about how these two sides come together. We propose a conceptualization that distinguishes a message’s support for an act from its support for the ideology underlying an act. Our...

This article examines the triple-interact, a cue-response-cue-response sequence that plays an important role in organizing negotiators’ behavior. Drawing on theories of interpersonal orientation and framing, we propose four types of triple-interact and make predictions about the relative occurrence and behavioral content of each type. We test these...

The authors examined the backgrounds and social experiences of female terrorists to test conflicting accounts of the etiology of this offending group. Data on 222 female terrorists and 269 male terrorists were examined across 8 variables: age at first involvement, educational achievement, employment status, immigration status, marital status, relig...

The interrater reliability of an internationally renowned crime linkage system—the Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System (ViCLAS)—was tested. Police officers (N = 10) were presented with a case file and asked to complete a ViCLAS booklet. The level of occurrence agreement between each officer was calculated. Results showed a 30.77% level of agreeme...

Computerized crime linkage systems are meant to assist the police in determining whether crimes have been committed by the same offender. In this article, the authors assess these systems critically and identify four assumptions that affect the effectiveness of these systems. These assumptions are that (a) data in the systems can be coded reliably,...

Research has demonstrated high levels of consensus and self-other agreement for extraversion and conscientiousness. However, the mechanisms whereby these assessments contribute to accuracy in behavioral predictions remain unclear. In this study, two judges rated targets on Big Five personality factors, and predicted their compliance to offer help i...

Reports an error in "Promoting safety voice with safety-specific transformational leadership: The mediating role of two dimensions of trust" by Stacey M. Conchie, Paul J. Taylor and Ian J. Donald (Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Advanced Online Publication, Aug 29, 2011, np). The affiliation of author Paul J. Taylor was incorrectly liste...

In this paper we discuss three crime contexts in which expert investigators undertake sense-making, a critical component of decision-making expertise. The first context, initial assessment in criminal investigations, illustrates the process of explanation-building. We present preliminary results showing how salient cues elicit legally-defined scrip...

Although research shows that employees’ trust and distrust in management influences their safety behavior, less is known about how these attitudes develop. Based on two-factor models of trust, we hypothesize that distinct trustworthiness qualities precede the development of employees’ trust and distrust in their supervisors. Eighty-five UK construc...

Although safety-specific transformational leadership is known to encourage employee safety voice behaviors, less is known about what makes this style of leadership effective. We tested a model that links safety-specific transformational leadership to safety voice through various dimensions of trust. Data from 150 supervisor-employee dyads from the...

The current chapter addresses the ongoing debate about whether individuals can perform as well as actuarial techniques when confronted with real world, consequential decisions. A single experiment tested the ability of participants (N = 215) and an actuarial technique to accurately predict the residential locations of serial offenders based on info...

Purpose. This article considers whether the modular facet of popular ‘radex’ models of offender behaviour is falsifiable or a statistical inevitability when using Jaccard coefficient, as evidence from other domains suggests. Method. Data equivalent to that examined in previous papers, and artificial data varying on four parameters, were examined us...

While terrorism informatics research has examined the technical composition of extremist media, there is less work examining the content and intent behind such media. We propose that the arguments and issues presented in extremist media provide insights into authors’ intent, which in turn may provide an evidence-base for detecting and assessing ris...

Over the last decade, the cultural diversity of those who perpetrate hostage incidents has increased dramatically. In this chapter, we examine key cultural differences in communication behavior and the implications of such differences to negotiation practice. We begin by illustrating the importance of culture to negotiation behavior and by introduc...

University students, police professionals, and a logistic regression model were provided with information on 38 pairs of burglaries, 20% of which were committed by the same offender, in order to examine their ability to accurately identify linked serial burglaries. For each offense pair, the information included: (1) the offense locations as points...

The authors analyzed authentic, videotaped police interviews (N = 27) to examine how the use of different influencing behaviors by police officers affects the provision of information by suspects. The analysis focused on variations in cue-response patterns across suspects from cultures that tend to use more direct and content-oriented communication...

In “The Criminal Profiling Illusion: What’s Behind the Smoke and Mirrors?” (Snook, Cullen, Bennell, Taylor, & Gendreau, 2008), we questioned the evidence base for criminal profiling (CP) and offered an explanation regarding how people have been misled into thinking that it is more effective than what research suggests. In their reply, Dern, Dern, H...

The precision, accuracy, and efficiency of geographic profiling (GP) predictions made by students, some of whom were taught a geographic profiling heuristic, were compared to those made by seven mathematical algorithms, including several based on a Bayesian prediction model. The stimuli consisted of 40 maps, each depicting a different offence serie...

The sharp growth in the number of publications examining female involvement in terrorism has produced a valuable but un-integrated body of knowledge spread across many disciplines. In this paper, we bring together 54 publications on female terrorism and use qualitative and quantitative analyses to examine the range of theoretical and methodological...

Human performance on the geographic profiling task—where the goal is to predict an offender's home location from their crime locations—has been shown to equal that of complex actuarial methods when it is based on appropriate heuristics. However, this evidence is derived from comparisons of ‘X-marks-the-spot’ predictions, which ignore the fact that...

This study compared the precision, accuracy, and efficiency of geographic profiles made by students to those made by mathematical algorithms. After making predictions on 20 maps, each depicting a different offence series, nearly half of the sampled students were instructed that ―the majority of offenders commit offences close to home‖. All of the s...

There is a belief that criminal profilers can predict a criminal's characteristics from crime scene evidence. In this article, the authors argue that this belief may be an illusion and explain how people may have been misled into believing that criminal profiling (CP) works despite no sound theoretical grounding and no strong empirical support for...

This research examined the relationship between Linguistic Style Matching (LSM)—the degree to which negotiators coordinate their word use—and negotiation outcome. Nine hostage negotiations were divided into six time stages and the dialogue of police negotiators and hostage takers analyzed across 18 linguistic categories. Correlational analyses show...

This article analyzes the motivations and recruitment of female suicide terrorists. Biographical accounts of 30 female and 30 male suicide terrorists were coded for method of recruitment, motivation for attack, and outcome of attack. A log-linear analysis found that female suicide terrorists were motivated more by Personal events, whereas males wer...

A great deal of forensic psychology concerns sequences of behaviours or events. In this paper, we review some recent efforts to examine forensic issues as sequences, discuss some of the contemporary methodologies involved, and highlight some of the lessons that emerge from this research. Specifically, we show: (i) how research on public violence ha...

Geographic profiling predictions can be produced using a variety of strategies. Some predictions are made using an equation or mechanical aid (actuarial strategy) while others are made by human judges drawing on experience or heuristic principles (clinical strategy). We review research that bears directly on the issue of whether clinical strategies...

Role is a concept that underlies most studies of human behavior in negotiation as subjects take on the roles of buyers and sellers or labor and management contract bargainers, for example Naturalistic studies also focus on such roles as teacher and administrator contract bargainers, hostage takers and hostage negotiators, Palestinian and Israeli pe...

A central assumption of negotiation research is that organized sequences of cues and responses underlie the dimensions and constructs found to structure interaction. We empirically tested this assumption using a new 'proximity' coefficient, which measures the global interrelationships among behaviours based on their intrinsic local organization wit...

Geographic profiling (GP) predictions (about where an unknown serial offender lives) can be produced using a variety of strategies. Some predictions are made using an equation or mechanical aid (actuarial approach) while others are made by human judges drawing on experience or heuristic principles (clinical approach). To assess the overall body of...

This study examines the effect of the number of crimes and topographical detail on police officer predictions of serial burglars’ home locations. Officers are given 36 maps depicting three, five, or seven crime sites and topographical or no topographical details. They are asked to predict, by marking an X on the map, where they thought each burglar...

Fifty-one Canadian police offi cers', working in major crime divisions, were interviewed about their experiences with criminal profi ling (CP), and their beliefs about its utility and validity. The majority of offi cers agreed that CP helps solve cases, is a valuable investigative tool, and advances investigator understanding of a case. Few of- fi...

While trust is increasingly recognized as a factor that impacts on safety behavior, the exact nature of trust and its role in shaping organizational safety is poorly understood. This special issue contains six articles that examine the relationship between trust and safety behavior in a range of high-risk work contexts. The issue begins with two ar...

There remains a discrepancy between experimental conceptualizations of reciprocity and evidence of reciprocity in real-world negotiation interactions. This paper outlines these discrepancies and proposes a general model of reciprocity that gives a single account of the discrepancies found in research findings. Drawing on social interactionist theor...

In a recent issue of this journal, Kocsis reviewed the criminal profiling research that he and his colleagues have conducted during the past 4 years. Their research examines the correlates of profile accuracy with respect to the skills of the individual constructing the profile, and it has led Kocsis to draw conclusions that are important to the pr...

The present study sought to identify consistent patterns in the actions of sexually violent offenders to determine whether sexual homicide and rape reflect different behavioral emphasis of a single thematic model of sexual assault. Crime scene behaviors of 74 (37 sexual homicides and 37 rapes) solved cases of sexual assaults were compared, and resu...

Although a range of methods allow investigators to measure the local dependencies among behaviors in a sequence, only indirect methods are available for measuring the interrelationships among behaviors across an entire sequence. This article introduces a new "proximity" coefficient that measures interrelationships among behaviors as a direct functi...

In this study (N = 16,001), the predictors of productivity (i.e., work performance) were investigated with A Shortened Stress Evaluation Tool (E. B. Faragher, C. L. Cooper, & S. Cartwright, 2004), which incorporates individual work stressors, stress outcomes (physical and psychological wellbeing), and commitment (both to and from an organization)....

In ‘Geographic profiling: The fast, frugal, and accurate way’ (Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2004, vol. 18, pp. 105–121), we demonstrated that most people are able to predict the home location of a serial offender by using a simple prediction strategy that exploits patterns found in the offender's spatial behaviour. In this issue of Applied Cogniti...

Geographic profilers have access to a repertoire of strategies for predicting a serial offenders home location. These strategies range in complexity—some involve more calculations to implement than others—and the assumption often made is that more complex strategies will outperform simpler strategies. In the present study, we tested the relationshi...

Purpose – To compare the experience of occupational stress across a large and diverse set of occupations. Three stress related variables (psychological well‐being, physical health and job satisfaction) are discussed and comparisons are made between 26 different occupations on each of these measures. The relationship between physical and psychologic...

In this study (N 16,001), the predictors of productivity (i.e., work perfor-mance) were investigated with A Shortened Stress Evaluation Tool (E. B. Faragher, C. L. Cooper, & S. Cartwright, 2004), which incorporates indi-vidual work stressors, stress outcomes (physical and psychological well-being), and commitment (both to and from an organization)....

This research examined the relationship between Linguistic Style Matching - the degree to which negotiators coordinate their word use - and negotiation outcome. Nine hostage negotiations were divided into 6 time stages and the dialogue of police negotiators and hostage takers compared across 12 linguistic dimensions. Correlational analyses showed t...