Psychology 2990A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Geographic Profiling, Offender Profiling, A Confession

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2990A/B
• Professor: Doug Hazelwood

Document Summary

Investigators are placed with the burden of determining whether a suspect is being deceptive when claiming to be innocent. The consequences of an inaccurate assessment are critical. Interestingly, the textbook suggests that there is little evidence that police officers and other individuals are able to accurately detect deception. Yet, researchers have sought ways to train individuals to improve their detection of deception (highlighted in porter and colleagues) This group of canadian researchers examined the ability of federal parole officers and students to detect deception. Some participants were trained in detecting deception, while the control group did not receive training. A more recent study by the same group of researchers (porter and colleagues, 2009) showed that even a brief training session can be useful for medical professionals to detect deception in their patients. However, both preliminary studies make clear the difficulty in fully understanding human behaviour.