Summary
Adams and Jarvis selected 60 statements written by suspects or victims during the investigation of violent crime and property crimes. In choosing the 60 statements, six selection factors were considered: clear case resolutions, open-ended instructions, legibility, original language, redundancy by individual, and redundancy by incident. Each selection factor were used to eliminate as many potential confounding factors as possible. Once the statements were selected, they were typed for computer-searching purposes.
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Extract
Are You Telling Me the Truth? Indicators of Veracity in Written Statements
While reporting her abduction from a shopping center parking lot, a young woman described seemingly implausible events to responding officers. When they asked her to recount everything that happened, however, she described the smell of motor oil on the assailant's hands. Her inclusion of such a unique sensory detail as a specific smell alerted the officers to the possibility that the allegation, as improbable as it appeared, might be true. Further investigation confirmed that the victim provided a truthful account.
Investigators frequently focus on indicators of deception1 to determine whether a suspect's or victim's account of a criminal incident is truthful or deceptive. Often, however, they overlook indicators of truthfulness, or veracity,2 in the process. To study the relationships between veracity and features of written state...See the full content of this document
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