PRACTICAL KINESIC INTERVIEW & INTERROGATION�

Stan B. Walters & Associates, Inc.

"The Lie Guy�"

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"Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Eye Movement & Criminal Interrogation"

This is taken from a private email exchange, February, 1997 between Stan B. Walters and Stever Robbins ( M.I.T., Harvard) Master Trainer - NLP, certified by Dr. Richard Bandler. It is copyrighted material. All rights are reserved, 1997, Stever Robbins & Stan B. Walters.

For "accurate" information regarding NLP, refer only to "CERTIFIED" master instructors. See NLP Society Home Page for more information regarding NLP & Design Human Engineering (DHE) & NLP Training.

Sir:

I am an author and instructor in criminal interview and interrogation and have been for more than 24 years. Over the last 10 years or so, I keep seeing NLP information being taught as an interrogation method. I have done some selected reading from other sources and I have been perusing your web page (very well done!).

My question relates to the diagnosis of eye movement. I have some understanding of the phenomenon of visual, auditory, kinesthetic and of information retrieval and creation. Many of my students are saying that they are receiving training in NLP and are telling me that they are learning that the eyes will tell everything and that you can always tell if someone is lying based on eye movement - specifically if they break eye contact to the right the person is lying. From some of my readings, the articles I have read on your page and my own area of expertise, I find this information extremely hard to accept as an absolute and don't believe this is appropriate/accurate use of NLP. Is this information I'm hearing accurate?

For confirmation, I am author of the text Principles of Kinesic Interview & Interrogation published by CRC Press Forensic Science Series. You may locate my web page at http://www.kinesic.com.

Can you give me a little feed back or an information source where I can clarify this information before I stick my foot in my mouth?

Thanks for your help.

Stan B. Walters
 

The Truth About Lying: Read the Signs & Protect Yourself From Deception
to learn about the scientific studies about deception cues.

Response from Stever Robbins:

Your instincts are correct. The people being taught NLP are being given incorrect information, or are interpreting the information incorrectly.

"Accessing cues" happen when a person retrieves information that isn't easily accessible from consciousness. If someone has been practicing or rehearsing a lie, they won't necessarily require a noticeable accessing cue to get it.

A 'constructed' cue might still happen when they're remembering. The circa-1977 NLP eye accessing model says rightward eye movements accompany Visual or Auditory CONSTRUCTED information. But people construct images/sounds for all kinds of reasons. Bandler and Grinder explicitly say in Frogs Into Princes that many people reconstruct their memories, and show a 'construct' eye accessing cue even when remembering. In fact, on a biochemical level, all memories are 'constructed'1 How 'constructed' a memory has to be to trigger that eye accessing pattern isn't clear. Of course, people don't necessarily access the information you think they're accessing. I did my undergraduate MIT thesis on validating the eye accessing cue model 2. My experimental protocol found no correlation, though my own personal impression of the model's validity was reinforced during debriefing. As part of the experiment, I asked, "How many chairs do you have in your living room?" expecting them to access visual information. They would have a KINESTHETIC eye accessing cue. That counted as a non-correlation. During the debrief, the subject said, "Remember when you asked about the chairs? I suddenly remembered how wonderful it felt when my mother rocked me to sleep in those chairs." (He went on about the wonderful FEELING for a few more seconds.) Just because I wanted him to access certain information didn't mean he did.

In police interrogation, I can imagine anyone--innocent or not--worrying about how their answers will be taken. If they worry by constructing scenarios in their mind, that could produce a 'constructed' accessing cue.

Finally, there are other models of eye movement which are taught in more recent NLP seminars that have little to do with the original accessing cues. Accessing memories is only the first step in using the information. Once accessed, a person arranges the information spatially around them according to their "sub modalities" and for associated pictures/sounds, according to the content of the information. At this point, a right-hand glance might be an accessing cue or might be a reference to information spatially located to the right.

 

The Truth About Lying: Read the Signs & Protect Yourself From Deception
to learn about the scientific studies about deception cues.

A better approach to lie detection is to learn to notice unconscious physiological responses: pupil dilation, pore size, skin flush, muscle tone changes, breathing, etc. Calibrate carefully. Ask lots of questions that you know the answers to, until you are sure you can tell what combinations of nonverbal responses correspond to truth. If they happen to lie to one of your questions and you know they're lying, you'll also have the chance to calibrate a lie. Good poker players do this when they look for a "tell" in the other players.

Then when you interrogate, watch for deviations in their nonverbal behavior. Those won't necessarily mean they're lying, but they will point to areas where the person--for whatever reason--had a significantly different internal response.

You want to calibrate with questions as close as possible to the intensity of the questions you'll be asking. If you calibrate 'truth' by asking, "Were you born on January 3, 1970?" and then interrogate with, "Did you fire two shotgun blasts into the gas station attendant at point blank range?" you'll likely get different nonverbals simply because of the relative intensity of the two questions.

I've heard that voice tone often changes when someone is lying. Since voice tone is pretty unconscious in the Western world, it's often outside the awareness of the liar. So calibrating on voice tone might be another fruitful tack to take.

But so far as I know, there's no absolute way to know if someone's lying. Human beings are far too complex for our current understanding to give definite results.

I hope this helps.

Stever Robbins

1 The Psychobiology of Mind-Body Healing, Ernest Lawrence Rossi, 1986, W.W. Norton & Company, page 69. 2 I've since changed my stance on the validity of even asking if the eye accessing model is 'true.' Accessing cues are a guide to intervention; they're not supposed to be 'true.'