Increasing cognitive load to facilitate lie detection: The benefit of recalling an event in reverse order.

TLDR

The study tested whether having interviewees recount events in reverse order increases the difference between liars and truth‑tellers and improves deception detection. Experiment 1 had 80 mock suspects either lie or tell the truth about a staged event and either report chronologically or in reverse order, while Experiment 2 had 55 police officers judge the veracity of videotaped interviews from Experiment 1. Reverse‑order interviews contained many more cues to deceit than control interviews, and requesting suspects to convey their stories in reverse order improved police observers’ ability to detect deception without inducing response bias.

Abstract

In two experiments, we tested the hypotheses that (a) the difference between liars and truth tellers will be greater when interviewees report their stories in reverse order than in chronological order, and (b) instructing interviewees to recall their stories in reverse order will facilitate detecting deception. In Experiment 1, 80 mock suspects told the truth or lied about a staged event and did or did not report their stories in reverse order. The reverse order interviews contained many more cues to deceit than the control interviews. In Experiment 2, 55 police officers watched a selection of the videotaped interviews of Experiment 1 and made veracity judgements. Requesting suspects to convey their stories in reverse order improved police observers' ability to detect deception and did not result in a response bias.