Criteria used for statement analysis in courts and asylum procedures Rebecca M. Willén, MSc University of Gothenburg Sweden

This presentation Offenders’ lies and truths: An evaluation of the Supreme Court of Sweden´s criteria for credibility assessments (Willén & Strömwall, manuscript submitted for publication) Introduction Method Results Implications Possible future directions

Introduction Page 1 of 6 Credibility assessments: in cases where the statement is of great importance Criminal cases: sexual assaults and domestic violence (Schelin, 2006) International criminal courts (May & Wierda, 2002) Asylum procedures (Kagan, 2003) The criteria used for these credibility assessments have never before been scientifically evaluated

Introduction Page 2 of 6 Sexual assaults and domestic violence Lena Schelin (2006): What the Supreme Court has referred to in the grounds for their decisions 5 reality criteria 6 control criteria The plaintiff’s account

Introduction Page 3 of 6 Reality criteria long, coherent, clear, The account should be... long, coherent, clear, detailed, consistent. Control criteria Difficult-to-explain points How the account was given (non verbal cues) Credible impression Impression of self-experience Contamination effect Burden of explanation

Introduction Page 4 of 6 Reality criteria longer, more coherent, Previous research shows that truthful accounts are... longer, more coherent, more clear, more detailed, more consistent. Control criteria Difficult-to-explain points Burden of explanation How the account was given (non verbal cues) Credible impression Impression of self-experience Contamination effect

Introduction Page 5 of 6 The global criteria credible impression and impression of self-experience are basically a direct judgement of veracity (Schelin, 2006) Previous research has shown that people are not skilled in detecting lies; the accuracy levels achieved are in general not better than chance (Bond & DePaulo, 2006)

Introduction Page 6 of 6 The main purpose of the present study was to evaluate the discriminative ability of the Swedish Supreme Court’s criteria

Method: Participants 30 offenders (9 women, 21 men) Criminal experience Men: violence, drug offences, theft Women: drug offences, theft, fraud Number of police interviews: 4 – 200 (Mdn: 23) 20 offenders had also been interviewed as plaintiffs or witnesses

Method: Procedure Each participant was interviewed twice: A true confession A false confession Each interview lasted about 10 min

Method: Coding procedure Transcribed interviews Reality criteria Three-point rating scale: 0-2 Global criteria (credible impression & self-experience) Six-point rating scale: 1-6 Low interrater agreement Reality criteria ranged from .24 to .74 (Pearson r) Two persons scored all interviews and the average value were used in the analyses (creating a five-point rating scale)

Main results The overall discriminative ability of the criteria No multivariate effect (p > .05) Truths were more clear than lies (p < .05) Effects of interview experience No multivariate effects (p > .05) One univariate interaction effect (p < .05) The most experienced participants gave a stronger impression of self-experience in their deceptive than in their truthful accounts The less experienced participants gave a stronger impression of self-experience in their truthful than in their deceptive accounts A non-significant tendency indicating more details in the most experienced offenders’ deceptive accounts than in their truthful, and the opposite for the less experienced offenders

Results: Gender A multivariate effect of gender (p < .05) Women received higher scores in their truthful than in their deceptive accounts Women gave a more credible impression in their truthful than in their deceptive accounts (p < .05) Accounts by women were less coherent in general than accounts by men (p < .05)

To sum it up The criteria used by Swedish courts did not distinguish truthful and deceptive accounts in this study The most experienced offenders seemed to had developed a kind of expertise in telling convincing lies Gender influenced the results The interrater agreements were low

Limitations of the study Ground truth was not established Small sample size Low interrater reliability Is it a finding or a limitation?

Conclusions Swedish courts are today practising a complex psychological technique without proper training (Diesen, 2008) This practise is not limited to Swedish courts, but also common in asylum procedures in several countries (Kagan, 2003) as well as in international criminal courts (May & Wierda, 2002). Hence, it is possible that this practise is negatively affecting many people in great need of protection The criteria and the practise of them still lacks scientific support

Possible future directions The discriminative ability of the criteria Interpreted statements Experienced vs naïve senders (criminally experienced) Isolated incidents vs prolonged events Gender differences Experienced vs naïve raters Accuracy Interrater agreement Choice of criteria Training of law practitioners E.g. Reality Monitoring (RM) vs the court’s criteria

Questions and viewpoints are most welcome. Thank you for listening!