Analysis & Training for Law Enforcement & Intelligence Agencies
Psychology of Interrogations, Lie Detection & Forensic Linguistics
An interrogation is a negotiation about the truth. Besides physical evidence, interrogations & witness interviews are the most important source of information. The goal is not to get a confession at any price, but to get to the truth. The Psychology of Interrogations and Detection of Deception are basic skills for Police & Intelligence to build trust, to spot a liar and to get infomation.
Mark T. Hofmann is a Crime- & Intelligence Analyst, trained and certified in the United States. He is a university lecturer for Behavioral- & Cyber Psychology and has met criminals, psychopaths, and hackers to research the inside perspective. He is in expert in Profiling & psychological methods. His approach and training on The Psychology of Interrogations & Deception Detection is based on three key elements:
1.Building trust and willingness to talk: This is mainly about the psychology of trust, but also time and location/room can have an effect.
2. Detecting deception: This is mainly about methods of Forensic Linguistics and Statement Analysis. Body language is completely overrated, language is much more important.
3. Getting to the Truth: Using lawful Interrogation- and Questioning Techniques and the Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE) to get true confessions.
Psychology of Interrogations, Lie Detection & Forensic Linguistics
Consulting Services & Workshops on Criminal Investigative Analyis & Profiling are available exclusively for members of Law Enforcement- and Intelligence Agencies of democratic countries.
Please send inquiries via your official/agency e-mail address.
Covid-19-Update
Virtual Consulting & Training is possible
Mark T. Hofmann is always ready to provide training and analysis, even remotely, if a meeting is not possible due to travel restrictions or time pressure.
Criminal Profiler und Lie Detection Expert
International Top-References
“Body language is completely overrated. You can see that someone is getting nervous, but not why. However, there are scientifically sound methods to detect deception and to get to the truth. Forensic linguistics play a key role.”
Mark T. Hofmann, Crime- & Intelligence Analyst
Sources: Hartwig, Granhag & Luke (2014), Strategic Use of Evidence During Investigative Interviews: The State of the Science, Bliemester (1988), Empirische Überprüfung zentraler theoretischer Konstrukte des Neurolinguistischen Programmierens (NLP), Kanning (2013), Mythen der Personalentwicklung und Weiterbildung, Hartwig, Granhag, Strömwall & Vrij (2004), Police Officers’ Lie Detection Accuracy: Interrogating Freely Versus Observing Video, Christianson (2007), Offenders’ Memories of Violent Crimes
The truth about Lying: Body Language is overrated, Language is underestimated
Not everything you’ve heard about body language is accurate. The field of body language and lie detection is full of misinformation and myths. Even in scientific studies, some “facts” continue to be cited, although this has never been proven.
Example 1: People are lying 200 times a day. One of the most quoted statements is unfortunately a lie itself. The number would only be valid if you count any kind of polite phrases (e.g. have a nice weekend, I’m fine, Dear Mr). Current studies assume that we lie 3-8 times per day, – in interrogations, the rate might be higher, of course.
Example 2: 93% of communication is said to be non-verbal. Self-proclaimed “body language experts” like to quote this sentence, because it helps to sell their own workshops. They refer to a study of Mehrabian & Ferris from the year 1967. If you take the time to read this study entirety, you will find out that the researchers neither proved this nor meant it. This is also an urban legend.
Example 3: Looking left, indicates a lie. Whole systems, like “NLP” are based on a kind of eye movement analysis. Prof. Dr. Kanning has pointed out that there is no proven connection between lying and eye movements. It is scientific nonsense and useless for Law Enforcement and the Intelligence Community.
But there are scientifically sound methods to detect deception, e.g. Forensic Linguistics.
How we can use Forensic Linguistics and Deception Detection in Interrogations
There is a lot of misinformation on the topics of body language and lie detection. This has led the professional community to reject the whole topic.
This is a mistake, because there are, of course, a few scientifically sound methods, questioning techniques and approaches in Forensic Linguistics for detecting deception and getting at the truth. But most police officers have neither the time nor the energy to fight their way through the unmanageable labyrinth of studies and books, in order to develop the ability to distinguish between facts and fakes after years.
Mark T. Hofmann is a Crime- & Intelligence Analyst, trained and certified in the US and speaks basic Modern Stabdard Arabic (اللغة العربية). He is a university lecturer for Behavioral- & Cyber Psychology and already at the age of 28, he has trained police units in Interrogation Techniques and Profiling. Mark T. Hofmann is in expert in Profiling & psychological approaches.
His training in The Psychology of Interrogation, Lie Detection & Forensic Linguistics is based on scientifically proven, up-to-date, practical and lawful techniques to build trust, detect deception and get to the truth. Consulting Services, Analysis and training are available for Law Enforcement and Intelligence Agencies of democratic countries worldwide. Feel free to contact us.