The Interview Room Archives

Classic Articles on Investigative Interviewing

The Interview Room Archive banner showing a two-way mirror view of an investigative interview room with table and case file as a female investigator observes, representing classic investigative interviewing articles by Stan B. Walters.

For many years Stan B. Walters published The Interview Room, an international electronic magazine read by investigators, law enforcement professionals, and interview specialists around the world.

The articles in this archive explore investigative interviewing, interrogation strategy, deception detection, and behavioral analysis—ideas that helped challenge outdated assumptions and shape modern thinking in the field.


Confession Motivators: Gain or Pain

Citation: Originally published in The Interview Room
January 2008 (Volume 7, Number 1) — by Stan B. Walters.

For each of us, the only reason we change our minds about a decision that we have already made is when someone or something convinces us to abandon our first decision and a new or different point of view. In our mind in some measurable one when see the new position we have taken is being more rewarding or satisfying than the old. We have made the change after we have been motivated by our perception of "gain" or "pain." The same evaluation process is being made in the mind of our interview or interrogation subject while we are persuading them to change their current position and begin to cooperated with us and comply with our requests for information or even confession. If you can understand the "gain" or "pain" motivation of your subject and demonstrate to your subject a big distinction between the two, you'll have a better chance at gaining compliance, cooperation and confession.

In the Gain vs. Gain scenario, you subject has already concluded that he has much more to gain by remaining consistent with the position he has already assumed. First you have two hurdles to overcome, your subject's commitment to staying consistent with his decision and second demonstrating to him or her the position you want them to choose will provide them even more to gain than they may realize. In this case you'll need to acknowledge that you subject does have some things to gain by sticking with their decision and point out that the new point of view may also have those very same rewards. That it itself however, is not enough to move your subject. You'll have emphasize the advantages your subject has overlooked or has undervalued in terms of their importance to him and his "gain" objective.

In the second scenario which is Pain vs. Pain, there is the possibility that your interviewee has seen no gain for them at all by accepting your conclusions and you'll have a long road of persuasion ahead of you. It that case you'll need to demonstrate to the subject that they have overlooked some pain issues with their point of view and to accept your proposition. Your recommended position may also afford the subject some "pain" but not nearly as much as what they had not anticipated if they decided to "stand" by his initial choice. In most cases, carefully listening to your subject and their reasons for rejecting your proposal, you'll hear the gain-pain issue or issues that is driving your subject's resistance. You'll need to focus on those issues because their are important to your subject but may not be that important to you.

The final scenario is usually the easiest to deal with and that's the Pain vs. Gain format. In this case, it is much easier to convince your subject to abandon their choice to resist your recommendations to solve the issue. They already see themselves has having to deal with some level of "pain" as a result of their behavior and all you have to do is show them the "light" and get them to look forward and see to "gains" they can make by reevaluating their current pain-filled situation. In many cases, just pointing out what may be obvious "gain" to you is all that is needed because your subject is "blinded" by their current state and has missed the benefits of changing they judgment about the possible outcomes of cooperation.

In any of the three scenarios above, the interviewer has to realize that their subject is motivated by "their" perception of Gain vs Pain. The evaluation by the subject as to what they define as gain or pain may not even be close to what you as the interviewer think is worth gaining or avoiding. Once the interviewer recognizes their subject's gain or pain motivation he can key in on those issues. The greater the distinction you can make between Gain - Gain, Gain - Pain, and Pain - Pain, the more likely and the more quickly you'll get the subject to come to the conclusion to abandon their current preferred decision and accept the interviewer's recommendation.

© 2008 Stan B. Walters / Third Degree Publishing. All rights reserved.
This article is part of The Interview Room Archive Series, preserving classic writings on investigative interviewing and interrogation strategy.

Many of the concepts introduced in these early articles continue to evolve today through Stan Walters’ work on the Cognitive Reliability Framework and evidence-based interview practices.

Cognitive Reliability Framework

Interview and Interrogation Techniques

Evasion versus Deception

Stan B. Walters

 

Among interview and Interrogation techniques a common belief held by many investigative interviewers and most people in general is that when a person is being deceptive that their statements are literally saturated with deceit. Results of numerous studies of deception behavior does not support this conclusion.  In reality, people engage in evasion far more often than they do pure deception.

My colleague Dr. Martha Davis and I studied the video taped interrogations and interview and interrogation techniques from 36 felony cases investigated by the New York Police Department.  Our study focused on identifying the verbal and nonverbal cues to deception by subjects in situations where there was significant jeopardy for the subject if their evasion and deception attempts failed.  One of the general observations we made that was very consistent with the results of previously published studies of deception was that people are far more evasive than deceptive.

Sustaining pure deception can be a difficult process for most people.  This is not to say that lying is “hard” but one’s ability to first create a deception and then sustain it under scrutiny is what is difficult.  Let’s face it.  The “deception” liar must remember the truth that they are attempting to hide and their first deception presentation. 

Next when their previous lie is challenged they must create a new lie that dovetails with the first deception and most
often it must be created on the fly.  At the same time they must leave the new lie open ended enough in case they are required to lie some more.  This a daunting task for anyone.

The most common technique the majority people including suspects use to avoid the truth is to practice evasion. Simple evasion does not require a great deal of creative thinking on the part of your deceitful suspect.  Evasion also does not require that one have a particularly acute memory just tell as much of the truth as possible. 

Also consider the observations and reactions of the person who is the target of the lie because the lie teller is doing that very same thing.  Pure deception is more likely to raise the suspicions of the lie target that evasion.

The conclusion we can make is that subjects are far more likely to be evasive than deceptive.  The conclusion of our research drew an interesting parallel observation.  Investigative interviewers are more likely to diagnose the stress behaviors of evasion as markers of deception. 

Deception behaviors generated by a subject are in fact rare.

Stan B. Walters “The Lie Guy®”
www.TheLieGuy.com
TheLieGuyAcademy.com
Try a FREE Online Course
LinkedIn
Facebook
Twitter