interview the suspect, is given background informa-
tion about the case and the suspect, and knows how to
strategically use this background information (evi-
dence) when conducting the interview. This entry con-
tains a description of the psychological basis for the
so-called Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE) technique
and also explains what it means to strategically use
evidence during an interview.
The research conducted to date on the issue of
strategic use of evidence to detect deception shares
two important features. First, it is based on a mock-
crime paradigm, where half the participants commit a
mock crime and the other half commit a noncriminal
act. Second, for each suspect there is some potentially
incriminating information indicating his or her guilt,
but this information does not preclude that the suspect
is in fact innocent. The interviewers were different for
different studies: experienced police officers, police
trainees, and trained experimenters.
This line of research is primarily motivated by
three facts. First, there is often some information
(evidence) pointing to the guilt of the person who
becomes a suspect in a criminal investigation.
Second, the so-called interview and interrogation
manuals have very little to offer in advising how to
best use this potentially incriminating information
when interviewing a suspect. Third, both archival and
field experiments show that many investigators tend
to use the potentially incriminating evidence in a
nonstrategic manner.
The SUE technique rests on the psychology of guilt
and innocence.It has been found that it is significantly
more common among guilty than innocent suspects to
bring a strategy to the interview room. Research further
shows that with respect to the strategies used during an
interview, guilty and innocent suspects differ markedly.
Specifically, guilty suspects will—if given the opportu-
nity—avoid mentioning possibly incriminating infor-
mation during an interview and—if deprived of the
avoidance alternative—deny that they hold incriminat-
ing knowledge. Both these findings fit neatly with what
is known of some of the most basic forms of human
behavior—namely, aversive conditioning. That is,
research on aversive conditioning has found an avoid-
ance response(so as to try to prevent confrontation
with a threatening stimulus) and an escape response(so
as to try to terminate a direct threat).
In sharp contrast, research on the behavior and
cognition of innocent suspects shows that they do not
tend to avoid and escape the potentially incriminatinginformation. Instead, their main strategies seem to be
“to keep the story real” and “to tell the truth like it
happened.” In short, they trust the truth to shine
through. This is in accord with well-established cog-
nitive biases such as the belief in a just world(i.e.,
people will get what they deserve and deserve what
they get) and the illusion of transparency(one’s inner
feelings will manifest themselves on the outside).
The fact that guilty and innocent suspects employ
different strategies can be very useful for the investi-
gator who needs to assess the veracity of the statement
offered by a particular suspect, if he or she knows how
to use the existing evidence strategically. In essence,
the investigator should first use the case file to iden-
tify pieces of potentially incriminating information,
place extra weight on information that the suspect will
not know for certain that the investigator possesses,
and then prepare questions addressing the potentially
incriminating information. In its most basic form, the
SUE technique proposes that when conducting
the actual interview, the investigator should encourage
the suspect to give a free recall—without disclosing
any of the potentially incriminating information to the
suspect—and then ask questions, of which some
address the potentially incriminating information, still
without revealing what the investigator knows.
If the potentially incriminating information is used
in a strategic manner, as suggested by the SUE-tech-
nique, then two predictions can be made: First, guilty
suspects will deliver a statement that, on one or several
occasions, contradicts what the interviewer knows.
That is, it will be possible to identify statement-
evidence inconsistencies. Second, innocent suspects
can be expected to tell a story consistent with what the
interviewer knows. That is, there will be a high degree
of statement-evidence consistency. Importantly, both
these predictions have received empirical support.
A training study using highly motivated police
trainees showed that the ones who received training in
how to use the evidence strategically during an inter-
view achieved a significantly higher deception detec-
tion accuracy (85%) than did the ones who received
no such training (56%). By interviewing in accor-
dance with the SUE technique, the trained interview-
ers managed to both create and use a diagnostic cue
to deception—namely, statement-evidence inconsis-
tency. In addition, for trained interviewers it was
found that innocent suspects experienced much less
cognitive demand than guilty suspects (which is a pos-
itive finding), whereas for untrained interviewers itDetection of Deception: Use of Evidence in——— 205D-Cutler (Encyc)-45463.qxd 11/18/2007 12:41 PM Page 205