Collective interviewing: eliciting cues to deceit using a turn-taking approach

Group interviewing provides useful insight into the social indicators of deception. The present study investigated turn-taking as a technique for enhancing novel cues to deceit. “Turn-taking” is a technique whereby the interviewer states which of the 2 interviewees is to answer the question, and then intervenes every 20 s by stopping whichever of the interviewees is responding and asking the other interviewee in the pair to continue from the point in which their partner was stopped. In the present experiment, truth tellers were real couples who had been in relationship for at least 1 year and cohabiting. Lying pairs were friends who pretended to be in a relationship for at least 1 year and cohabiting. All “couples” were interviewed together in their pairs about their real or fictitious relationship. It was found that when forced to turn-take, truth-telling pairs were significantly more able to continue on from one another, whereas lying pairs were significantly more likely to repeat what their partner last said before continuing. Additionally, lying pairs waited before speaking after being told to turn-take significantly more than truth-telling pairs. A subsequent lie detection study revealed that these 3 turn-taking cues improved people’s ability to accurately detect deceit considerably. Implications for simultaneous interviewing are discussed.