Important
- Types of false confessions – Includes voluntary, coerced-compliant, and coerced-internalized confessions, each with distinct psychological motivations.
- Length of interrogation – Serves as a key risk indicator for identifying false confessions, as prolonged interrogations significantly increase the probability of a false confession.
- Juvenile false confession motivations – Youth tend to falsely confess because they fail to consider the long-term consequences, believe they will get to go home immediately, or assume they will receive a less harsh sentence by cooperating.
- Organized-disorganized model foundations – This classification system was specifically based on and developed from the study of serial sexual murderers, not general homicides.
- Deductive vs. inductive profiling – Deductive profiling relies strictly on evidence at a specific crime scene to infer traits, while inductive profiling compares the crime to known statistics and demographics of similar past offenders.
- Geographic profiling’s first step – The initial action a geographic profiler must take is drawing a circle (or perimeter) around all the known crime locations.
- Marauder versus commuter behavior – Represents a distinction in spatial behavior where some offenders operate outward from a central home base (marauders) while others travel from outside into a separate target area (commuters).
- Types of polygraph tests – The two main formats used in deception detection are the Comparison Question Test (CQT) and the Concealed Information Test (CIT).
- Relevant versus comparison questions – In a CQT, relevant questions deal with specific crime details, while comparison questions focus on past problematic or unethical behaviors designed to induce stress.
- Interpreting CQT readings – A high physiological reaction or “spike” on a relevant question compared to a comparison question suggests deceptive behavior regarding the crime.
Core Concepts
- False Confessions: A confession given for a crime that the individual did not commit, which accounts for a significant portion of wrongful convictions.
- Polygraph: A device used to record an individual’s autonomic nervous system responses—specifically heart rate, respiration, and skin conductance—to infer deception.
- Comparison Question Test (CQT): The most commonly used polygraph method that compares physiological responses to crime-relevant questions against probable-lie comparison questions.
- Concealed Information Test (CIT): A polygraph test utilizing multiple-choice questions to determine if a suspect possesses specific “guilty knowledge” about crime details.
- Countermeasures: Physical techniques (e.g., pressing toes to the floor) or mental strategies (e.g., counting backward) deliberately used by suspects to distort polygraph readings and conceal guilt.
- Brain-Based Deception Detection: Advanced technological methods, including Event-Related Brain Potentials (ERPs like the P300) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), used to measure neural activity associated with lying or recognizing concealed information.
- Verbal and Nonverbal Cues to Lying: Valid indicators of deception include a higher voice pitch, a slower speech rate, and providing fewer details, whereas stereotypic cues like gaze aversion and fidgeting are generally unreliable.
- Truth-Bias: The pervasive psychological tendency for people to judge more messages as truthful than deceptive, contributing to poor deception detection accuracy.
- Malingering: The intentional production or exaggeration of psychological or physical symptoms motivated by external incentives, such as avoiding legal consequences or gaining financial payouts.
- Factitious Disorder: A disorder involving the intentional fabrication of symptoms primarily for the internal psychological motivation of assuming the “sick role”.
- Conversion Disorder: A condition where neurological or physical symptoms manifest unintentionally and unconsciously without external incentives.
- Criminal Profiling: An investigative technique aimed at predicting the personality, behavioral, and demographic characteristics of an unknown offender based on evidence left at the crime scenes.
- Geographic Profiling: A spatial analysis technique that uses the locations of a connected series of crimes to predict the most probable geographic area where the offender resides.
Theories and Frameworks
- Adaptational Model of Malingering: A theory proposing that malingering occurs as a rational coping strategy when an individual faces a perceived adversarial context, high personal stakes, and no other viable alternatives.
- Pathogenic Model of Malingering: A theory suggesting that malingering is the result of an underlying mental disorder, where the patient creates bogus symptoms to gain control over their pathology.
- Criminological Model of Malingering: A model theorizing that antisocial individuals feign symptoms specifically to avoid legal consequences.
- Organized-Disorganized Model: A profiling typology developed by the FBI that categorizes crime scenes and corresponding offender backgrounds into organized (planned, methodical) or disorganized (impulsive, chaotic) types.
- Investigative Psychology: An empirical framework developed to replace subjective profiling with a scientific approach based on environmental psychology and rigorous statistical linkage of crime scene behaviors to offender characteristics.
- Circle Hypothesis: A geographic profiling concept proposing that an offender’s home base is likely located within a circle whose diameter is defined by the two farthest crimes in a series.
- Distance Decay Hypothesis: A geographic principle stating that the probability of an offender committing a crime decreases the further away they travel from their home.
Notable Individuals
- William Marston: Created the first polygraph technique measuring blood pressure and created the Wonder Woman comic book character.
- John Larson: Developed an early version of the polygraph that measured heart rate, respiration, and skin conductivity, which was successfully used in court.
- David Lykken: Developed the Concealed Information Test (CIT), originally known as the guilty knowledge test.
- Paul Ekman: Conducted foundational research on detecting deception through the analysis of microexpressions and other nonverbal behaviors.
- Leanne ten Brinke: Researched the behavioral consequences and facial expressions associated with high-stakes interpersonal deception.
- David Canter: Founded the field of investigative psychology and advanced the scientific rigor of criminal profiling.
- James Brussel: A psychiatrist who constructed a highly accurate and famous profile of the “Mad Bomber” in New York City.
- John Douglas: A key figure in the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit who helped institutionalize modern criminal profiling.