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Experienced and Novice Officers' Generalized Communication Suspicion and

Veracity Judgments

Article  in  Law and Human Behavior · February 2016

DOI: 10.1037/lhb0000169

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 Masip, J., Alonso, H., Herrero, C., & Garrido, E. (2016). Experienced and novice officers' generalized communication suspicion and
veracity judgments. Law and Human Behavior, 40(2), 169-181.
Law and Human Behavior © 2016 American Psychological Association
2016, Vol. 40, No. 2, 169 –181 0147-7307/16/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000169

Experienced and Novice Officers’ Generalized Communication Suspicion

and Veracity Judgments
Jaume Masip, Hernán Alonso, Carmen Herrero, and Eugenio Garrido
University of Salamanca, Spain

Deception detection research has shown that police officers are less truth-biased and make their veracity
judgments with greater confidence than do nonofficers. Here we examined nonofficers, novice officers,
and experienced officers’ response bias, confidence, and generalized communicative suspicion. In
Experiment 1, novice officers aligned with nonofficers in terms of both generalized communicative
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

suspicion scores and confidence, with both these groups scoring lower than experienced officers.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

Generalized communicative suspicion scores and veracity judgments were not significantly related for
either sample. However, novice officers aligned with experienced officers in terms of judgments: both
police groups were lie-biased, whereas nonofficers were truth-biased. These findings suggest that unlike
experienced officers, who have embraced the police culture to a greater degree, novice officers are not
dispositionally suspicious (generalized communicative suspicion); however, they are able to mirror the
prototypical police behavior (deception judgments) in police-related contexts. Experiment 2 supported
these notions.

Keywords: lie bias, deception, GCS, police, police culture

“We don’t interrogate innocent people.” This was the reply
given by Joseph Buckley, president of John E. Reid and Associ-
ates, a U.S. police training firm, when someone asked him whether
his interrogation methods could cause innocent suspects to confess
(Kassin & Gudjonsson, 2004, p. 36). Buckley said this because in
order for a suspect to be questioned with Reid’s confrontational
interrogation techniques, the suspect must first have been judged
guilty on the grounds of either his or her reactions to a preinter-
rogation interview (called Behavior Analysis Interview; see Inbau,
Reid, Buckley, & Jayne, 2013), or some kind of evidence. How-
ever, Buckley’s statement also reflects the view of many seasoned
law enforcement officers—the view that suspects are typically
guilty and lie during police questioning. In this study, we exam-
ined the sources of this bias.
Investigator Bias Effect
Unlike the general public, which displays a truth bias when
judging someone else’s veracity (e.g., C. F. Bond & DePaulo,
2006; Levine, Park, & McCornack, 1999), police officers have
often been found to show a lie bias—that is, they make more lie
This article was published Online First February 4, 2016.
Jaume Masip, Hernán Alonso, Carmen Herrero, and Eugenio Garrido,
Department of Social Psychology and Anthropology, University of Sala-
manca.
Hernán Alonso is now at the Pedagogical Medical Institute San Juan de
Dios, Valladolid, Spain; Eugenio Garrido is now retired.
The authors are grateful to Professor Sigi Sporer for his help with the
signal detection theory formulas.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jaume
Masip, Faculty of Psychology, University of Salamanca, Avenida de la
Merced, 109-131, 37005 Salamanca, Spain. E-mail: jmasip@usal.es
judgments than truth judgments (see reviews by Alonso, Masip, &
Garrido, 2009; Garrido & Masip, 1999; Meissner & Kassin, 2002).
In his major exploration of the deception detection literature, Vrij
(2008) concluded that
[c]ompared to laypersons, professionals seem to be somewhat better
in detecting lies and somewhat worse in detecting truths. This is, at
least in part, because professional lie catchers do not appear to show
a truth-bias. In fact, many studies have demonstrated that police
officers show a lie-bias, judging the majority of the fragments they
were exposed to as being deceptive. Moreover, in every study where
both professional lie catchers and laypersons have participated, the
professional lie catchers were more inclined to judge a fragment as
deceptive than laypersons. (p. 164)
C. F. Bond and DePaulo’s (2006) meta-analysis did not find a
lie bias among “experts” (i.e., people whose occupations expose
them to lies, such as police officers, judges, auditors, job inter-
viewers or psychiatrists); however, between-study comparisons
revealed that such experts were less biased toward truthfulness
judgments than nonexperts.
Not only are officers less inclined to make truth judgments than
are nonofficers; they also see themselves as skilled lie- and truth-
detectors and make their veracity judgments with great confidence
(e.g., DePaulo & Pfeiffer, 1986; Garrido & Masip, 1999; Garrido,
Masip, & Herrero, 2004; Meissner & Kassin, 2002). Meissner and
Kassin (2002; see also Masip, 2014b) coined the term investigator
bias effect to refer to the officers’ tendency to make lie judgments
(often with high confidence).
Behavior, Personality, and Situations
There are some crucial notions in this paper that should not be
confused. These notions are lie bias, generalized communicative
suspicion, and police-related situations. Lie bias refers to behavior,
generalized communicative suspicion is a personality variable, and

169
 170 MASIP, ALONSO, HERRERO, AND GARRIDO
police-related situations are a type of situation. We think it is
important to clarify these notions.
First, calling someone a liar (or, for that matter, a truth teller) is
a behavior. Repeatedly calling other people liars is performing the
same behavior repeatedly. Thus, the lie bias pertains to the behav-
ioral domain.
Behavior may be caused by personality, by situations, or by
their interaction (e.g., Bandura, 1986). Concerning personality,
some people may be more distrustful and suspicious than others,
which may lead them more often to judge others’ statements as
deceptive. Levine and McCornack (1991) posited that individuals
systematically differ in terms of their generalized communicative
suspicion (GCS) —that is, their “predisposition towards believing
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
that the messages produced by others are deceptive” (p. 328).
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Levine and McCornack conceptualized this construct as a rela-
tively enduring personality characteristic and created a scale to
measure it. They expected that generalized communicative suspi-
cion scores (personality) would predict deception judgments (be-
havior).
Also, some situations or contexts may be more likely to prompt
deception judgments than others. Imagine that on Friday morning,
a police officer is interviewing a suspect at the police station. The
next day, the same officer, who is off duty, is visiting a distant
town with his or her family and asks a pedestrian for directions. It
is reasonable to assume that the first situation is more likely to
prompt deception judgments from the officer than the second
situation. Interestingly, situations may affect not only behaviors
but also personality (e.g., Bandura, 1986). For instance, over the
long run, repeated exposure to situations arousing suspicion may
turn the individual into a suspicious person.
The main point of Experiment 1 was to examine (a) whether
officers (particularly the most experienced ones) displayed a stron-
ger lie bias (behavior) than non-officers; (b) whether experienced
officers, in part because of their exposure to suspicion-arousing
situations, were more dispositionally (personality) suspicious (in
terms of their generalized communicative suspicion scores) than
novice officers and nonofficers; and (c) whether officers’ gener-
alized communicative suspicion (personality) could explain their
tendency to make lie judgments (behavior). In Experiment 2, we
examined the influence of the situation on novice officers’ decep-
tion judgments. In the following sections, we describe the back-
ground of this study and make specific predictions.
Officers’ Suspicion
Masip, Alonso, Garrido, and Antón (2005) suggested that the
officers’ lie bias could be a result of greater communicative
suspicion among officers than among lay people. In a prior study,
Garrido et al. (2004) had shown video clips with an honest or
deceptive sender (i.e., a person giving a statement) to both police
officers and students. They found that officers made more decep-
tion judgments than students. Furthermore, relative to students,
officers mentioned more cues associated with deception judg-
ments, fewer cues associated with truthfulness judgments, and
interpreted ambiguous behaviors as deception indicators rather
than as truth indicators (see Masip, Garrido, Herrero, Antón, &
Alonso, 2006). Subsequently, Nahari (2012), who also examined
law enforcement officers’ and students’ credibility judgments and
the reasons they provided for their judgments, reported similar
findings. These findings suggest confirmation bias was in opera-
tion: officers appeared to enter the veracity assessment situation
with the belief the sender was going to lie, and they appeared to
search for supportive evidence. But why would officers assume the
sender was going to lie?
Masip et al. (2005) reasoned that the police are often involved
in competitive interactions (Robinson, 1996). In cooperative inter-
actions all participants collaborate to attain a common goal. Con-
versely, in competitive interactions different participants have
different goals and everyone is pursuing his or her own benefit at
the expense of the others. The nature of policing, as well as the
police goals of maintaining order and enforcing the law lead the
police to be frequently involved in competitive interactions. Over
the years, police involvement in situations like these may generate
chronic distrust and suspiciousness.
More generally, distrust or suspiciousness may also reflect po-
lice culture. Pioneering work by Skolnick (1966), Westley (1970),
and Rubinstein (1973) depicted the police as an isolated, cohesive,
distrustful, secretive, and authoritarian professional group exposed
to multiple dangers in their interactions with citizens. More re-
cently, some researchers have argued that police culture may be
more diverse than what early researchers thought, and that the
central characteristics of the culture may have changed somewhat
(see, e.g., O’Neill, Marks, & Singh, 2007; Paoline, 2003, 2014;
Scaramella et al., 2010; Yüksel & Tosun, 2015). However, Wad-
dington (1999) maintains that the core elements of the police
culture remain essentially the same across time and nations.
Among these elements are (a) position of authority; (b) glorifica-
tion of violence, action and excitement (celebrating the “real”
police job); (c) crime-fighting image; (d) social isolation; (e)
protective solidarity with fellow officers; and (f) “dirty work” and
knowledge of the miseries of the “underworld” (see Waddington,
1999, for the rationale behind these and other characteristics of the
police culture, as well as their psychological benefits for officers).
It is important to note that distrust, cynicism, and suspicion have
also been associated with police culture:
An integral part of the police personality is cynicism: the notion that
all people are motivated by evil and selfishness. Police cynicism
develops among many officers through the nature of police work. . . . By
constantly dealing with crime and the most unsavory aspects of social
life . . . [police officers’] faith in humanity seems to diminish.
(McNamara, 1999, pp. 8 –9)
According to Caplan (2003), cynicism is an inevitable conse-
quence of police work, and “a cynic expects nothing but the worst
in human behavior” (p. 304). Skolnick (1994) argued that “the
element of danger seems to make the policeman especially atten-
tive to signs indicating a potential for violence and lawbreaking.
As a result, the policeman is generally a ‘suspicious’ person” (p.
43). Johnson, Todd, and Subramanian (2005) argued that danger-
ous and unpredictable persons cannot be identified in advance;
because of this, officers “treat each individual with suspicion and
caution” (p. 104). Paoline (2014) described the police “as a so-
cially isolated group that are distrustful and suspicious of their
primary clientele, as they continually attempt to maintain the upper
hand in utilizing their coercive authority” (p. 3579).
In short, frequent exposure to situations involving crime, fre-
quent competitive interactions with suspected offenders, the dan-
gers of police work, the authority of the police, and the resulting
 OFFICERS’ GENERALIZED COMMUNICATIVE SUSPICION AND VERACITY JUDGMENTS
social isolation of officers engender suspicion and distrust directed
toward the general public. An essential component of suspicion is
the belief that other people have something to hide and will not be
fully honest, which might generate a lie bias.
It is important to note here that these effects are more likely to
be apparent among experienced officers than among police re-
cruits. The cumulative effect of frequent involvement in compet-
itive interactions happens in the long run. Also, it is reasonable to
assume that senior officers embrace the police culture—which
involves suspicion—to a greater degree than police recruits. In-
deed, the police culture is transmitted from one generation to the
next through socialization within the police force, first via formal
training at the academy, and later on by more experienced peers at
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the workplace (McNamara, 1999; Paoline, 2003; Sato, 2003;
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Scaramella et al., 2010; Van Maanen, 1975). Scholars such as
Paoline (2003, 2014) and Waddington (1999) argue that the main
function of police culture is to allow officers to cope with the
hazards of police work and social pressures. Therefore, novice
officers will progressively embrace the police culture as they leave
the police academy and get into real policing. Also, increased
informal interactions with senior officers contribute to the novices’
socialization (e.g., Paoline, 2003). Police socialization models
suggest that skepticism, distrust and disenchantment appear some-
what late in a police career (e.g., Barker, 1999; Van Maanen,
1975). It can thus be said that officers’ immersion into police
culture increases gradually over their police career. Therefore,
there is no reason to expect much distrust among novice officers.
These are personality changes that happen over time through a
lengthy, gradual process.
Indeed, Masip et al. (2005) asked undergraduates, novice offi-
cers, and veteran officers to complete Levine and McCornack’s
(1991) Generalized Communicative Suspicion Scale (see left col-
umn in Appendix). Because of experienced officers’ greater ex-
posure to competitive interactions and police culture, Masip et al.
(2005) predicted that experienced officers would score signifi-
cantly higher than would novice officers and students on the scale.
The data supported this prediction. Further, the generalized com-
municative suspicion scores of novice officers and students did not
differ significantly. Hurst and Oswald (2012) subsequently repli-
cated this pattern of results. These findings supported the notion
that seasoned officers are more distrustful than their less experi-
enced peers and the general public, and suggested that the officers’
lie bias may be caused by generalized suspicion.
Officers’ judgmental confidence may also increase over time.
Paoline (2003) contended that officers believe they can minimize
the dangers to which they are exposed by “reading people and
situations” (p. 202). This belief may contribute to increasing senior
officers’ misplaced confidence in “reading people” to detect de-
ception. Also, a number of factors may gradually increase officers’
reliance on inaccurate beliefs about deceptive behavior over their
career—factors such as the absence of disconfirmatory feedback
when officers’ veracity judgments are inaccurate paired with con-
firmatory feedback when judgments are accurate (see DePaulo &
Pfeiffer, 1986), schema-consistent memory, confirmation bias, and
belief perseverance (see Garrido et al., 2004, pp. 267–268, for a
discussion). Overreliance on inaccurate beliefs may increase offi-
cers’ perceived ability to detect truths and lies, as well as the
confidence they place in their veracity judgments (while not in-
creasing accuracy). Thus, both communication suspicion and judg-
171
mental overconfidence would be expected to be hallmarks of a
veteran officer’s personality.
Rationale for the Present Study
One weakness in Masip et al.’s (2005) study is that even though
they measured participants’ generalized communicative suspicion,
they did not examine the relation between generalized communi-
cative suspicion scores and veracity judgments. Masip et al. as-
sumed that higher scores lead to more lie judgments and fewer
truth judgments, but is this assumption correct? If it is, would the
more seasoned officers (who scored higher on the scale) thus make
more lie judgments than their less experienced peers? The current
study addressed these issues.
Generalized Communicative Suspicion and
Deception Judgments
The notion that generalized communicative suspicion scores
predict deception judgments is not undisputed. Levine and Mc-
Cornack (1991) found that individuals scoring moderate and high
on the scale were more likely to make deception judgments than
individuals scoring low. However, McCornack and Levine (1990)
found no effect of generalized communicative suspicion scores on
the number of lie judgments, and two studies conducted in prisons
revealed no significant relation between inmates’ scores on the
scale and their deception judgments (G. D. Bond, Malloy, Arias,
Nunn, & Thomson, 2005; G. D. Bond & Lee, 2005). In another
study, G. D. Bond, Thompson, and Malloy (2005) showed that
prisoners had higher generalized communicative suspicion scores
and made more deception judgments than nonprisoners; however,
a regression analysis across groups revealed that generalized com-
municative suspicion did not predict deception judgments. Hurst
and Oswald (2012) found that students and police recruits were
truth-biased, whereas police officers were neither truth- nor lie-
biased. Correlations between generalized communicative suspi-
cion and preliminary (not final) deception judgments were signif-
icant only for the students, but not for police officers or recruits.
Hurst and Oswald ran regression analyses entering concern about
misjudging truths or lies, age, and generalized communicative
suspicion scores as predictors of final deception judgments. The
effect of generalized communicative suspicion scores was not
significant for either sample. In short, if there is any link between
generalized communicative suspicion scores and deception judg-
ments, this link seems to be weak (see Masip, 2014a), and other
variables of a different kind may also influence judgments. In this
study, besides examining the influence of generalized communi-
cative suspicion (personality) on the kind of judgment, we also
examined the influence of police experience, and the situation.
Novice Versus Experienced Officers’ Lie Bias
Whereas much research has been conducted comparing the
veracity judgments of police officers versus nonofficers, to our
knowledge little research exists comparing novice versus experi-
enced officers’ judgments (for an exception, see Hurst and Os-
wald’s [2012] Study 1). In the current study, nonofficers, novice
officers, and veteran officers completed the Generalized Commu-
nicative Suspicion Scale and judged the veracity of a number of
 172 MASIP, ALONSO, HERRERO, AND GARRIDO
videotaped statements. In terms of communicative suspicion, we
expected to replicate Masip et al.’s (2005) findings: Novice offi-
cers were expected to have scores that did not differ from those of
nonofficers, with both these groups scoring significantly lower
than the experienced officers. This would reflect the influence of
policing situations and police culture on personality. However, in
terms of deception judgments, it was unclear whether novice
officers would align with nonofficers or with their veteran peers.
If novice officers make as few deception judgments as nonof-
ficers, this would show that novice officers are like nonofficers in
terms of both (a) generalized, slow changes in personality over
time (generalized communicative suspicion), and (b) context-
dependent, immediate changes in behavior (deception judgments).
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On the other hand, if novice officers make as many deception
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
judgments as their more seasoned colleagues, then this would
reveal that (a) despite novice officers being like nonofficers in
terms of generalized communicative suspicion (because they have
not yet undergone any lengthy socialization process within the
police force), they (b) try to act (behavior) as a prototypical “real”
officer, that is, showing harshness, distrust, suspicion, and there-
fore making many deception judgments.
Experiment 1
We asked nonofficers, novice officers, and experienced officers
to complete the Generalized Communicative Suspicion Scale.
Later on, and with no explicit connection to the prior task, all
participants judged the veracity of a number of videotaped truthful
and deceptive statements. We predicted the following:
Hypothesis 1: Experienced officers would score significantly
higher than both novice officers and nonofficers on the Gen-
eralized Communicative Suspicion Scale. No difference was
expected between novice officers and nonofficers.
Hypothesis 2: Despite the mixed evidence concerning the
relationship between generalized communicative suspicion
scores and veracity judgments, we tentatively predicted that
higher scores would be significantly related to a greater ten-
dency to make deception judgments.
Hypothesis 3: Police officers would make more deception
judgments (and fewer truth judgments) than nonofficers. It
remained an open question whether novice officers would
differ or not from experienced officers in terms of truth/
deception judgments.
Hypothesis 4: Relatedly, because of the judgmental tendencies
predicted in Hypothesis 3, we expected police officers to be
more accurate than nonofficers in judging lies and less accu-
rate than nonofficers in judging truths. It remained an open
question whether novice and experienced officers would differ
in this regard.
Hypothesis 5: Experienced officers would show more confi-
dence in their veracity judgments than would both novice
officers and nonofficers. No difference was expected between
the latter two groups.
Method
Participants
Seventy-two nonofficers (Mage ⫽ 22 years, SD ⫽ 1.61, SEM ⫽
0.19), 72 novice officers (Mage ⫽ 28 years, SD ⫽ 1.79, SEM ⫽
0.21; 64 with less than one year of experience and none with more
than five years of experience), and 72 experienced officers
(Mage ⫽ 44 years, SD ⫽ 3.96, SEM ⫽ 0.47; Mexperience ⫽ 22 years,
SD ⫽ 3.93, SEM ⫽ 0.46, experience range: 16 to 32 years)
participated in the study. Nonofficers were undergraduate students
whereas police officers were studying at the national police acad-
emy of Spain to become or to be promoted to police inspectors. In
the Spanish National Police Force, inspectors are of a higher rank
than plain officers. Experienced plain officers can apply to be
promoted to inspectors after a number of years of service. Lay
people can enter the police after passing a competitive examination
to become either plain officers or inspectors. The requirements to
become an inspector are much more stringent than those to become
a plain officer. Some officers with not enough experience to be
promoted to inspector may also take this competitive examination
to have access to an inspector position (for more detail, see Masip
et al., 2005, Note 3 on p. 1052).
Materials
We used Masip et al.’s (2005) Spanish adaptation of Levine and
McCornack’s (1991) Generalized Communicative Suspicion
Scale. The scale contains 11 items, and Cronbach’s alpha for the
Spanish adaptation is .82 (Masip et al., 2005).
In the present study, we used four videotapes previously used by
Masip and his colleagues (Masip, Garrido, & Herrero, 2006, 2009,
2010; Street & Masip, 2015). The videotapes contain the state-
ments of 24 individuals who lied and told the truth (in counter-
balanced order) answering three questions about either an at-
tempted or successful theft they had seen on videotape. The 48
resulting statements were arranged in four different videotapes,
each containing six liars and six truth tellers. All relevant vari-
ables, such as senders’ gender, question order, and so forth were
counter balanced, and the same person never appeared in the same
tape lying and telling the truth. Specifically, the videos were labeled A1,
A2, B1, and B2. Videos A1 and B1 contained the statements of the
same 12 senders, but those who lied in A1 told the truth in B1, and
those who told the truth in A1 lied in B1. Videos A2 and B2
contained the statements of the other 12 senders and, again, those
who lied in one of the videos told the truth in the other video (see
Masip et al., 2006).
Procedure
All participants first completed Levine and McCornack’s (1991)
Generalized Communicative Suspicion Scale. Then, at a different
time in the same academic year, they judged the veracity of 12
videotaped statements. At the time of data collection, the partici-
pants were unaware of the connection between the two tasks,
which were administered by different researchers at different
times. Within each sample, 18 participants watched each of the
four 12-statement videos. Both students in the same year at the
university and police students in the same year at the police
 OFFICERS’ GENERALIZED COMMUNICATIVE SUSPICION AND VERACITY JUDGMENTS
academy are normally divided into smaller groups on the basis of
the initial letter of their family name. A different video was shown
to each group. Groups did not differ in terms of gender or age for
either sample.
The videos were shown in a classroom at the School of Psy-
chology (nonofficers) or at the police academy (officers). Empty
seats were left between one participant and the next, and the
researcher asked participants to keep silent and do the task indi-
vidually. The researcher handed out an answer booklet to partici-
pants. The instructions, which very closely resembled those used
by Masip et al. (2006), were printed on the front page and the
researcher read them aloud. The participants learned that they were
about to watch 12 people (senders), each making a statement about
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
a videotape that they (senders) had seen, and that the statement of
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
each particular sender could be either truthful or deceptive. The
participants’ task was to determine whether each sender was lying
or telling the truth. The experimenter told the participants that after
each statement he would pause the tape so they could provide their
answers by ticking the “Lying” or “Telling the truth” box for the
particular sender in the response booklet and by indicating their
confidence in each judgment on a 1 (not at all confident) to 7
(absolutely confident) scale. After both tasks had been completed,
the participants were debriefed.
Overview of Analyses
We conducted a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) to
examine whether nonofficers, novice officers, and experienced
officers differed in their generalized communicative suspicion
scores (Hypothesis 1). To test Hypothesis 2, we calculated linear
regression analyses to see how well generalized communicative
suspicion scores could explain (a) the raw percentage of judgments
of deceptiveness made by participants, (b) B”, and (c) false alarms.
B” is a signal detection theory (SDT) measure of bias. According
to SDT (e.g., Green & Swets, 1966; Swets, Dawes, & Monahan,
2000), a detection task depends on two distinct processes, namely,
discrimination (accuracy) and decision criterion (response bias).
Unlike raw percentages, SDT makes it possible to evaluate each of
these processes independently. A measure of response bias that is
independent of accuracy is B”. We calculated B” with Donaldson’s
(1992) formula. An unbiased response would yield B” ⫽ 0; neg-
ative values would reflect a lie bias and positive values a truth bias.
False alarms were the percentage of truths misjudged as lies.
For the other hypotheses, because the independent variables
were categorical and the dependent measures were quantitative, we
ran 3 (sample: nonofficers vs. novice officers vs. experienced
officers) ⫻ 2 (veracity: truthful vs. deceptive statement) mixed
Table 1
Means (Standard Deviations) for the Dependent Variables in Study 1
Measure
Generalized Communication Suspicion scores 34.94ab (9.68)
Percentage of judgments of deceptiveness
B”
Accuracy
Confidence
Note. Within each row, scores with different subscripts differ at the p ⬍ .05 level.
173
ANOVAs on the percentage of judgments of deceptiveness and on
B” (to test Hypothesis 3), on the percentage of correct judgments
(accuracy; to test Hypothesis 4), and on confidence (to test Hy-
pothesis 5). Using ANOVAs is in keeping with the analytical
approach normally used in deception research.
Results
Generalized Communicative Suspicion
Cronbach’s alpha of the Generalized Communicative Suspicion
Scale for the current study samples was .84 for nonofficers and .85
for both novice officers and experienced officers. The ANOVA
revealed that the three samples differed significantly in their
scores, F(2, 213) ⫽ 4.69, p ⫽ .010, ␩2 ⫽ .042, 90% CI [.006, .089]
(see Table 1). Post hoc Sheffé tests revealed that nonofficers (M ⫽
34.94, SD ⫽ 9.68, SEM ⫽ 1.14) and novice officers (M ⫽ 33.90,
SD ⫽ 9.70, SEM ⫽ 1.14) did not differ significantly, p ⫽ .827;
however, experienced officers’ scores (M ⫽ 38.81, SD ⫽ 10.95,
SEM ⫽ 1.29) were significantly higher than were those of novice
officers (p ⫽ .016) and marginally higher than those of nonofficers
(p ⫽ .075). Overall, the pattern of results supported Hypothesis 1.
Remarkably, the descriptive statistics are strikingly similar to those
reported by Masip et al. (2005; for nonofficers, M ⫽ 35.57, SD ⫽
9.36; for novice officers, M ⫽ 33.13, SD ⫽ 10.11; for experienced
officers, M ⫽ 39.42, SD ⫽ 11.09).
In line with Hypothesis 2, we expected generalized communi-
cative suspicion to explain the percentage of judgments of decep-
tiveness, false alarms, and B”. The results of the linear regression
analyses are displayed in Table 2. It is apparent that the predictive
value of the generalized communicative suspicion scores was
essentially null. Hypothesis 2 was not supported by the data.
Judgments
The Sample ⫻ Veracity ANOVA run on the percentage of
judgments of deceptiveness showed that deceptive statements were
judged as deceptive (M ⫽ 57.64, SD ⫽ 18.31, SEM ⫽ 1.25) more
often than truthful statements (M ⫽ 46.91, SD ⫽ 21.16, SEM ⫽
1.44), F(1, 213) ⫽ 38.88, p ⬍ .001, ␩p2 ⫽ .154, 90% CI [.086,
.227]. What is more interesting is that the sample main effect was
also significant, F(2, 213) ⫽ 8.98, p ⬍ .001, ␩p2 ⫽ .078, 90% CI
[.026, .135]. Post hoc Sheffé tests revealed that both experienced
officers (M ⫽ 56.60, SD ⫽ 14.19, SEM ⫽ 1.67) and novice
officers (M ⫽ 53.70, SD ⫽ 13.55, SEM ⫽ 1.60) made more
deception judgments than did students (M ⫽ 46.53, SD ⫽ 16.18,
SEM ⫽ 1.91); p ⬍ .001 and p ⫽ .015, respectively; however, the
Nonofficers Novice officers Experienced officers
33.90a (9.70) 38.81b (10.95)
46.53a (16.18) 53.70b (13.55) 56.60b (14.19)
.14a (.56) ⫺.14b (.50) ⫺.22b (.48)
54.86a (12.80) 57.18a (12.22) 54.05a (12.89)
4.17a (0.83) 4.51a (0.75) 4.99b (0.86)
 174 MASIP, ALONSO, HERRERO, AND GARRIDO

Table 2 F[1, 123] ⫽ 4.58, p ⫽ .033, ␩p2 ⫽ .021, 90% CI [.001, .063])
Outcomes of the Linear Regression Analyses to Explain the displayed greater accuracy in judging lies than truths, nonofficers
Percentages of Judgments of Deceptiveness, B”, and False were somewhat more accurate in judging truths (M ⫽ 58.33, SD ⫽
Alarms Based on Generalized Communication Suspicion Scores 22.38, SEM ⫽ 2.64) than lies (M ⫽ 51.39, SD ⫽ 18.71, SEM ⫽
2.21), F(1, 123) ⫽ 4.03, p ⫽ .046, ␩p2 ⫽ .019, 90% CI [.0002,
Measure F df p R R2 B .0586]. Additional analyses revealed that experienced officers’
Percentage of judgments of accuracy was significantly above chance in judging lies, t(71) ⫽
deceptiveness 5.15, p ⬍ .001, d ⫽ 0.61, 95% CI [0.25, 0.96], but not in judging
Nonofficers 0.59 1, 70 .447 .09 .01 0.00 truths, t(71) ⫽ ⫺1.05, p ⫽ .300, d ⫽ ⫺0.12, 95% CI [⫺0.48,
Novice officers 0.26 1, 70 .613 .06 .00 0.00 0.23]. The same pattern emerged among novice officers, t(71) ⫽
Experienced officers 0.00 1, 70 .969 .01 .00 0.00
Across all samples 0.48 1, 214 .490 .05 .00 0.00 5.34, p ⬍ .001, d ⫽ 0.63, 95% CI [0.28, 0.98], and t(71) ⫽ 1.55,
B” p ⫽ .129, d ⫽ 0.18, 95% CI [⫺0.17, 0.53], respectively. However,
Nonofficers 0.67 1, 70 .416 .10 .01 ⫺0.01 nonofficers’ accuracy was significantly above chance in judging
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Novice officers 0.24 1, 70 .626 .06 .00 0.00 truths, t(71) ⫽ 3.16, p ⫽ .002, d ⫽ 0.37, 95% CI [0.02, 0.73], not
Experienced officers 0.01 1, 70 .941 .01 .00 0.00
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lies, t(71) ⫽ 0.63, p ⫽ .531, d ⫽ 0.07, 95% CI [⫺0.28, 0.43].

Across all samples 0.38 1, 214 .539 .04 .00 0.00
False alarms These findings support Hypothesis 4 in that both police groups
Nonofficers 1.08 1, 70 .303 .12 .02 0.00 were more accurate in judging lies than truths, whereas nonofficers
Novice officers 0.43 1, 70 .517 .08 .01 0.00 were more accurate in judging truths than lies.
Experienced officers 0.00 1, 70 .951 .01 .00 0.00
Across all samples 2.11 1, 214 .147 .10 .01 0.00
Confidence
Hypothesis 5 was tested with a 3 (Sample) ⫻ 2 (Veracity) mixed
difference between experienced and novice officers was not sig- ANOVA on judgmental confidence. The sample main effect was
nificant, p ⫽ .498 (see Table 1). significant, F(2, 213) ⫽ 18.18, p ⬍ .001, ␩p2 ⫽ .146, 90% CI [.076,
An additional Sample ⫻ Veracity ANOVA revealed that sam- .214]. Post hoc Scheffé tests revealed that experienced officers’
ples also differed in their B” scores, F(2, 213) ⫽ 9.56, p ⬍ .001, confidence (M ⫽ 4.99, SD ⫽ 0.86, SEM ⫽ 0.10) was significantly
␩p2 ⫽ .082, 90% CI [.029, .141], with both experienced greater than both nonofficers’ (M ⫽ 4.17, SD ⫽ 0.83, SEM ⫽
(B” ⫽ ⫺.22, SD ⫽ .48, SEM ⫽ .06) and novice officers 0.10), p ⬍ .001, and novice officers’ confidence (M ⫽ 4.51, SD ⫽
(B” ⫽ ⫺.14, SD ⫽ .50, SEM ⫽ .06) displaying a lie bias, whereas 0.75, SEM ⫽ 0.09), p ⫽ .002. Novice officers’ confidence was just
nonofficers displayed a truth bias (B” ⫽ .14, SD ⫽ .56, SEM ⫽ slightly (p ⫽ .053) greater than the confidence of nonofficers. A
.07). All three B” figures were significantly different from 0 (no significant veracity main effect revealed that participants were
bias), for experienced officers: t(71) ⫽ ⫺3.82, p ⬍ .001, more confident in judging lies (M ⫽ 4.62, SD ⫽ 0.93, SEM ⫽
d ⫽ ⫺0.45, 95% CI [⫺0.80, ⫺0.10]; for novice officers: 0.06) than truths (M ⫽ 4.50, SD ⫽ 0.96, SEM ⫽ 0.07), F(1,
t(71) ⫽ ⫺2.28, p ⫽ .025, d ⫽ ⫺0.27, 95% CI [⫺0.62, 0.08]; for 213) ⫽ 6.55, p ⫽ .011, ␩2 ⫽ .030, 90% CI [.004, .076]. In line
nonofficers: t(71) ⫽ 2.14, p ⫽ .036, d ⫽ 0.25, 95% CI [⫺0.10, with previous research (Aamodt & Custer, 2006; DePaulo, Char-
0.61]. Scheffé tests revealed no significant difference between lton, Cooper, Lindsay, & Muhlenbruck, 1997), the confidence-
experienced and novice officers (p ⫽ .630), but nonofficers dif- accuracy correlation was not significant (among nonofficers,
fered significantly from both the experienced (p ⬍ .001) and the r(N ⫽ 72) ⫽ .11, p ⫽ .343; among novice officers, r(N ⫽
novel officers (p ⬍ .001). 72) ⫽ ⫺.21, p ⫽ .082; among experience officers, r(N ⫽ 72) ⫽
In short, whereas nonofficers displayed a significant truth bias, .04, p ⫽ .712; across all samples, r(N ⫽ 216) ⫽ ⫺.02, p ⫽ .770).
both police groups were significantly biased toward making de- Hypothesis 5 was supported in that confidence was greater among
ception judgments. These findings supported Hypothesis 3. experienced officers than among novice officers and nonofficers.

Accuracy
To test Hypothesis 4, we ran a Sample ⫻ Veracity mixed
ANOVA on percentage correct judgments (accuracy). The sample
main effect was not significant, F(2, 213) ⫽ 1.19, p ⫽ .308, ␩p2 ⫽
.011, 90% CI [.000, .039]—accuracy did not differ significantly
across samples (see Table 1). A significant main effect of veracity
revealed that lies (M ⫽ 57.64, SD ⫽ 18.32, SEM ⫽ 1.25) were
better detected than truths (M ⫽ 53.09, SD ⫽ 21.16, SEM ⫽ 1.44),
F(1, 213) ⫽ 5.19, p ⫽ .024, ␩p2 ⫽ .024, 90% CI [.002, .067].
However, this was moderated by sample, F(2, 213) ⫽ 8.98, p ⬍
.001, ␩p2 ⫽ .078, 90% CI [.026, .135]. Whereas experienced
officers (Mlies ⫽ 60.65, SD ⫽ 17.54, SEM ⫽ 2.07; Mtruths ⫽ 47.45,
SD ⫽ 20.68, SEM ⫽ 2.44; F[1, 123] ⫽ 14.54, p ⬍ .001, ␩p2 ⫽ .064,
90% CI [.021, .123]) and novice officers (Mlies ⫽ 60.88, SD ⫽
17.28, SEM ⫽ 2.04; Mtruths ⫽ 53.47, SD ⫽ 19.16, SEM ⫽ 2.26;
Discussion
All our predictions except Hypothesis 2 were supported. In
terms of generalized communicative suspicion scores, experienced
officers were the most suspicious of all participants. The fact that
novice officers scored lower than experienced officers on the
Generalized Communicative Suspicion Scale suggests that the
increased suspicion and distrust of the police is not a result of
police selection practices. Instead, what appears to increase suspi-
cion is lengthy police experience and socialization. Over the years,
officers experience many competitive interactions that might in-
crease their skepticism concerning other people’s truthfulness.
Similarly, progressive socialization into the police culture may
lead police officers to become more distrustful.
However, this increased suspicion did not explain the police’s
lie bias. Even though it may seem reasonable to posit that police
 OFFICERS’ GENERALIZED COMMUNICATIVE SUSPICION AND VERACITY JUDGMENTS
culture and its influence on personality have an impact on behav-
ior, causing a lie bias among experienced officers, the present
findings do not support this notion. First of all, linear regression
analyses revealed that generalized communicative suspicion could
not explain lie judgments (measured either as raw percentages of
deception judgments or with more sophisticated SDT measures)
for either group. Thus, the notion that officers’ lie bias is caused by
their increased communicative suspicion is unsupported (see
also Hurst & Oswald, 2012). Second, experienced officers (who
had higher generalized communicative suspicion scores than
novice officers) did not display a stronger lie bias than did
novice officers. In fact, novice officers made as many deception
judgments as the experienced officers. Consequently, both po-
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lice groups were more accurate in judging lies than truths. In
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contrast, nonofficers displayed a truth bias and were better at
identifying truths than lies.
It is thus apparent that the lie bias is not caused by a police
personality but by other factors. The nature of the task (deception
detection) is relevant for police work. Situational demands placed
upon the police’s behavior could be a good candidate to explain
the current pattern of results.
Novice officers were aligned with experienced officers in terms
of deception judgments (percentage of judgments of deceptiveness
and B”) and with nonofficers in terms of generalized communica-
tive suspicion scores and confidence (see Table 1). This shows that
even though the novice officers had not yet experienced the slow
changes that happen over a police career (suspicion and confi-
dence), in this police-related situation they were nevertheless ca-
pable of behaving like “real officers,” displaying skeptical and
distrustful behaviors prototypically attributed to the police. In
other words, novice officers are not (personality) “real officers”
yet, but they may act (behavior) as such in a police-related situa-
tion (see Goffman, 1959).
The reason for this may be that novice officers feel they are
officers. To enter the police force, applicants have to spend a
substantial amount of time (ranging from months to years) prepar-
ing to pass a harsh competitive examination that many fail. Passing
the exam may create a sense of pride and achievement and may
also establish a psychological separation in the minds of those who
pass between themselves, who are no longer ordinary citizens but
carefully selected “officers,” and those who failed. Once at the
academy, formal socialization begins. The police academy is a
total institution, that is, “a place of residence and work where a
large number of like-situated individuals, cut off from the wider
society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an en-
closed, formally administered round of life” (Goffman, 1961, p.
xiii). In a total institution, all aspects of life are tightly scheduled,
happen in the same place, under the same authority, and in the
company of other similar individuals, and all the enforced activi-
ties are designed to fulfill the aims of the institution (Goffman,
1961; see also Davies, 1989). As in other total institutions, in the
police academy first “the attitudes, worldviews, and behavior
patterns of the individual are stripped away” (McNamara, 1999,
p. 3) to later provide the novice officer with “a new set of
attitudes, values, and beliefs” (McNamara, 1999, p. 4). Police
recruits are forced to adopt “uniformity in appearance, attitude,
and behavior, as well as strict adherence to rules and proce-
dures” (Paoline, 2003, p. 203) and “group cohesion and loyalty
are stressed in a paramilitary environment” (Paoline, 2003, p.
175
203). Pressure toward uniformity is great, and new recruits
“actively seek to assimilate themselves into the organization at
every available opportunity” (Sato, 2003, p. 291). Also, the
novice officers get in touch and interact with senior officers in
this police-only environment. All of these circumstances help to
explain why the self-identity of new recruits is already that of
a police officer. Novice officers perceive themselves as officers
and seek to learn to act as officers.
But the situation matters. In police-related situations, novice
officers may feel they are performing a professional task (e.g.,
running an interrogation or assessing veracity) and will play
their roles, acting the way they think others expect them to act
(e.g., being inquisitive and questioning the truthfulness of the
suspects’ answers). In most respects, their behavior is very
much like that of their experienced peers. However, differences
may emerge between novice and experienced officers in more
ordinary, nonpolice-related situations. There, police recruits
may feel no need to display prototypical officers’ behaviors.
In the context of the current experiment, judging the veracity of
speakers describing a theft is related to police work. That is why
novice officers made as many deception judgments as experienced
officers. However, the Generalized Communicative Suspicion
Scale is not a scale to measure communicative suspicion in police-
related situations. Instead, it measures personality (see Levine &
McCornack, 1991). It measures generalized communicative sus-
picion, which is dispositional, not situational. This is one possible
explanation why experienced officers scored significantly higher
on this scale than did novice officers; the latter did not feel the
need to play the role of an officer when filling in a scale about
general—rather than situation-specific and police-related— com-
municative suspicion.
This line of reasoning suggests that if we had used a scale
designed specifically to tap suspicion in police-related situations
only instead of using the Generalized Communicative Suspicion
Scale, then novice officers would have scored as high as experi-
enced officers. We decided to conduct a follow up study to test this
suggestion.
Experiment 2
We created a new scale we named Interrogation Suspicion Scale
(see Appendix). We built the scale by rewriting each item in
Levine and McCornack’s (1991) Generalized Communicative Sus-
picion Scale so that the item specifically referred to a police
interrogation situation (see Appendix). Therefore, whereas the
Generalized Communicative Suspicion Scale items do not refer to
any specific situation, the Interrogation Suspicion Scale specifi-
cally focused on a police-related situation.
Participants and Procedure
We collected new data from 74 novice officers (Mage ⫽ 27
years, SD ⫽ 1.97, SEM ⫽ 0.23; 56 with less than one year of
experience and none with more than three years of experience),
and 107 experienced officers (Mage ⫽ 45 years, SD ⫽ 3.89,
SEM ⫽ 0.38; Mexperience ⫽ 23 years, SD ⫽ 3.95 years, SEM ⫽
0.38; experience range: 14 to 31 years). They all were at the
national police academy of Spain studying to become or to be
promoted to police inspectors. They completed the Interroga-
 176 MASIP, ALONSO, HERRERO, AND GARRIDO

tion Suspicion Scale (13 items) in class and were debriefed
afterward.
Results
Internal Consistency of the Interrogation
Suspicion Scale
We ran principal component factor analyses setting the program
to obtain a single factor solution. In shaping or adapting the
Generalized Communicative Suspicion Scale, both Levine and
McCornack (1991) and Masip et al. (2005) adopted the criterion of
retaining only those items with factor loadings of .40 or greater. To
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experienced and novice officers completing the Interrogation Sus-
picion Scale (which measures suspicion in police-related situa-
tions only) would not differ and would all have high scores. To test
for these predictions, we ran an ANOVA to compare the interro-
gation suspicion scores of the current experienced and novice
officers with the generalized communicative suspicion scores of
experienced and novice officers of Experiment 1. More specifi-
cally, we conducted a 2 (Scale) ⫻ 2 (Officers’ Experience: novice
vs. experienced officers) independent groups ANOVA on gener-
alized communicative suspicion scores and interrogation suspicion
scores. Because the total number of items was the same (11) both
in Masip et al.’s (2005) adaptation of the Generalized Communi-
cative Suspicion Scale and in the current Interrogation Suspicion

remain in line with previous research, and also because of statis- Scale, the sum scores could be compared directly—that is, there
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tical considerations, we adopted the same criterion: The greater the
loading, the more the variable reflects the factor. According to
Tabachnick and Fidell (2013), only variables with loadings of .32
and above should be interpreted. We also calculated Cronbach’s
alphas and removed those items that limited the scale reliability.
All these items happened to have factor loadings smaller than .40;
thus, our two item-retention criteria converged. The process of
item deletion is detailed in Table 3 where, for each variation of the
scale, the factor loading of each item is displayed along with the
scale reliability (alpha) if each item were removed. We can see that
an initial factor analysis revealed that Items 9 and 10 had factor
loadings lower than required and scale reliability would increase if
they were removed (see Table 3). After removing these two items,
we obtained a unidimensional scale with 11 items and Cronbach’s
alpha ⫽ .73 (see Table 3). Alpha was remarkably similar to the
figures reported by Levine and McCornack (1991) in validating
the original Generalized Communicative Suspicion Scale (.71 in
Study 1 and .75 in Study 3).
Data Analysis
We expected that, unlike experienced and novice officers com-
pleting the Generalized Communicative Suspicion Scale (which
measures generalized suspicion), who differed in their scores,
was no need to average across items.
Findings
The main effect of scale was significant, F(1, 321) ⫽ 276.94,
p ⬍ .001, ␩p2 ⫽ .463, 90% CI [.400, .517], with interrogation
suspicion scores (M ⫽ 53.37, SD ⫽ 8.01, SEM ⫽ 0.59) being
higher than generalized communicative suspicion scores (M ⫽
36.35, SD ⫽ 10.60, SEM ⫽ 0.88). This reveals that officers’
distrust is higher in situations specifically related to their profes-
sional role, such as police interrogations. A small but significant
main effect for experience revealed that novice officers (M ⫽
43.99, SD ⫽ 13.36, SEM ⫽ 1.11) scored lower than experienced
officers (M ⫽ 47.32, SD ⫽ 11.62, SEM ⫽ 0.87), F(1, 321) ⫽ 4.08,
p ⫽ .044, ␩p2 ⫽ .013, 90% CI [.0002, .040]. However, as expected,
this effect was qualified by a significant Scale ⫻ Experience
interaction, F(1, 321) ⫽ 7.60, p ⫽ .006, ␩p2 ⫽ .023, 90% CI [.004,
.057] (see Figure 1). Scheffé tests showed that although experi-
enced officers (M ⫽ 38.81, SD ⫽ 10.95, SEM ⫽ 1.29) scored
higher than did novice officers (M ⫽ 33.90, SD ⫽ 9.07, SEM ⫽
1.14) on the Generalized Communicative Suspicion Scale (p ⫽
.001), scores of experienced (M ⫽ 53.06, SD ⫽ 8.00, SEM ⫽ 0.77)
and novice officers (M ⫽ 53.81, SD ⫽ 8.04, SEM ⫽ 0.93) did not
differ on the Interrogation Suspicion Scale (p ⫽ .585).

Table 3
Factor and Scale Reliability Analyses and Item Deletion Process for the Interrogation Suspicion Scale

All items Item 10 deleted Items 10 and 9 deleted

Alpha if item Alpha if item Alpha if item
Item M SD Factor loadings deleted Factor loadings deleted Factor loadings deleted

1 3.86 1.54 .505 .6863 .500 .7057 .513 .7098

2 4.03 1.43 .522 .6815 .519 .7009 .509 .7103
3 5.44 1.49 .507 .6906 .509 .7054 .511 .7121
4 5.02 1.40 .525 .6867 .525 .7026 .535 .7075
5 5.02 1.55 .457 .6956 .460 .7086 .451 .7187
6 4.36 1.47 .557 .6765 .551 .6972 .556 .7024
7 5.39 1.44 .452 .6901 .449 .7078 .440 .7172
8 4.92 1.38 .528 .6868 .530 .7008 .523 .7090
9 4.95 1.72 .298 .7126 .298 .7293 — —
10 2.12 1.18 .050 .7234 — — — —
11 4.95 1.24 .547 .6866 .549 .7017 .547 .7089
12 5.08 1.16 .595 .6857 .598 .6992 .610 .7031
13 5.30 1.27 .521 .6949 .526 .7075 .541 .7116
Cronbach’s alpha .7093 .7234 .7293
Note. The numbers in italics indicate that the corresponding items did not meet the retention criteria and needed to be removed.
 OFFICERS’ GENERALIZED COMMUNICATIVE SUSPICION AND VERACITY JUDGMENTS
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Figure 1. Novice and experienced officers’ generalized communicative
suspicion and interrogation suspicion scores. Error bars attached to each
column denote standard errors of the means.
General Discussion
Prior research has shown that the truth bias typically found in
deception detection research vanishes or even reverses when de-
ception raters are police officers rather than lay people (Alonso et
al., 2009; C. F. Bond & DePaulo, 2006; Garrido & Masip, 1999;
Meissner & Kassin, 2002; Vrij, 2008). Nonetheless, the question
of whether novice and experienced officers differ in terms of
veracity judgments has been largely unexplored. Here we found
that in assessing veracity, novice officers are as biased toward
deception as experienced officers. Conversely, nonofficers are
biased toward making truth judgments.
Also, prior research demonstrated that experienced officers dis-
play greater generalized communicative suspicion than both nov-
ice officers and nonofficers (Hurst & Oswald, 2012; Masip et al.,
2005). Here we found support for this difference. Police officers’
daily involvement in competitive interactions and the progressive
endorsement of police culture through the officers’ careers may
explain why experienced officers scored higher on the Generalized
Communicative Suspicion Scale. Generalized communicative sus-
picion was originally expected and found to predict lie judgments
(Levine & McCornack, 1991); however, research with both lay
people (McCornack & Levine, 1990) and prisoners (G. D. Bond &
Lee, 2005; G. D. Bond, Malloy, et al., 2005; G. D. Bond, Thomp-
son, et al., 2005) raised questions about this relationship. Here we
examined the relationship between generalized communicative
suspicion and kind of judgment with lay people, novice officers
and experienced officers. All effects were null. Hurst and Oswald
(2012) also found no significant impact of officers’ generalized
communicative suspicion scores on judgments. Together, these
results cast doubt on the usefulness of Levine and McCornack’s
(1991) scale to predict lie judgments either among officers or
among nonofficers (see Masip, 2014a). However, both the current
study and previous research (G. D. Bond, Thompson, et al., 2005;
Hurst & Oswald, 2012; Masip et al., 2005) show that generalized
communicative suspicion scores appear to differentiate between
presumably suspicious individuals (e.g., prisoners or experienced
officers) and ordinary individuals.
177
Prior research has found that police officers place more confi-
dence in their veracity judgments than do nonofficers (e.g., De-
Paulo & Pfeiffer, 1986; Garrido et al., 2004; Meissner & Kassin,
2002). To our knowledge, the question of whether experienced and
novice officers’ confidence scores differ has remained untapped.
We tackled this issue here and found that experienced officers are
more confident in their veracity judgments than are both novice
officers and nonofficers.
This pattern of results provides interesting insights into novice
and experienced officers’ behaviors and personalities. Generalized
communicative suspicion and confidence reflect the influence of
police work and police socialization on the officers’ personality.
However, deception judgments are context-dependent behaviors.
We argued that in indisputably police-related situations (e.g., in
assessing the veracity of a testimony about a theft), novice officers
may embrace the stereotypical role of a “real” officer (e.g., by
showing distrust and skepticism); however, in more unspecific or
ambiguous contexts (e.g., when filling in a scale about general
communicative suspicion), novice officers do not see the need to
play that role. However, experienced officers behave in a distrust-
ful and skeptical way in both kinds of situations because this
behavior is an expression of their personalities.
Experiment 2 supported these notions. We built the Interroga-
tion Suspicion Scale, which was parallel to the Generalized Com-
municative Suspicion Scale except that it focused on a police-
relevant situation (i.e., interrogations). As predicted, unlike
generalized communicative suspicion scores, which were lower for
novice than for experienced officers, interrogation suspicion scores
did not differ between the two police groups, and were high for
both groups. This effect was not due to a ceiling effect for the
interrogation suspicion scores (i.e., of all participants giving ex-
tremely high scores on all Interrogation Suspicion Scale items), as
average interrogation suspicion scores (just above 53) were still far
below the highest possible score (77) (see also the mean score for
each item, on a 1-to-7 scale, in Table 3). The Interrogation Sus-
picion Scale was thus a sensitive instrument.
Limitations
The current study is a laboratory study with no serious conse-
quences for being caught lying (i.e., no threats of punishment were
used to motivate senders). It has been argued that in real life, indi-
viduals questioned by the police face much more serious conse-
quences than in typical laboratory studies. This increased motivation
to be believed would produce more deception cues in liars, which in
turn would increase observers’ accuracy (e.g., Carlucci, Compo, &
Zimmerman, 2013; Wright Whelan, Wagstaff, & Wheatcroft, 2015).
However, researchers have also argued that in high stake situations,
even truth tellers might be afraid of being disbelieved and may thus
come to show the stereotypical behavior of a liar (C. F. Bond &
DePaulo, 2006). Even though this might be particularly so among
individuals pertaining to certain minority groups that may feel appre-
hension of being perceived in terms of a negative stereotype (Naj-
dowski, 2011; see Fenn, Blandón-Gitlin, Pezdek, & Yoo, 2015, for
empirical support), truth tellers’ increased apprehension or fear might
be a general phenomenon when the stakes or motivation to be be-
lieved are high (see Hartwig, 2014). This phenomenon would make
truth tellers look like liars, which would in turn increase the lie bias
(rather than increasing accuracy), particularly in judging truths. Does
 178 MASIP, ALONSO, HERRERO, AND GARRIDO
the available empirical evidence support these contentions? In their
meta-analysis, C. F. Bond and DePaulo (2006) found that in the
relatively few studies where motivation had been manipulated
(within-study comparisons), stronger motivation to be believed led to
higher accuracy rates. However, when comparing across the many
studies with different motivation levels (between-study comparisons),
C. F. Bond and DePaulo found that higher motivation did not increase
accuracy; rather, it reduced truth judgments, particularly when judges
had access to visible cues. This evidence suggests that the lie bias
would be stronger in real life (high stakes) compared with the present
experiment (low stakes). It is uncertain whether the increased stakes
and sender’s motivation would affect the judgments of officers and
nonofficers differently.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
In a series of studies with real-life, high stake truths and lies told
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
by offenders, Mann and Vrij (e.g., Vrij, Mann, Robbins, & Rob-
inson, 2006; see Alonso et al., 2009, for a comprehensive review)
did not find any lie bias among officers (no nonofficers partici-
pated in these studies). More recently, both Carlucci et al. (2013)
and Wright Whelan et al. (2015) found a stronger lie bias among
officers than among nonofficers judging high stakes, real-life,
crime-related truths and lies. Therefore, we do not think the
officers’ lie bias we found is limited to low stake, laboratory
situations. We do agree, however, that more ecologically valid
studies are necessary in the deception detection domain and ap-
plaud Carlucci et al.’s (2013) and Wright Whelan et al.’s (2015)
efforts in this direction.
Another limitation of this study is that the Interrogation Suspicion
Scale (Experiment 2) was administered at a later time than the
Generalized Communicative Suspicion Scale. This time delay could
presumably have influenced the results such that the lack of a signif-
icant difference between novice and experienced officers in Experi-
ment 2 could be a result of the data collection timing rather than a
result of using the Interrogation Suspicion Scale instead of the Gen-
eralized Communicative Suspicion Scale. We believe this explanation
is extremely unlikely to account for our results. First, there is no
theoretical reason why a few months’ time should obliterate the
difference between the scores of novice and experienced officers.
Second, the generalized communicative suspicion difference between
groups made sense theoretically and replicated prior findings by Hurst
and Oswald (2012) and Masip et al. (2005); this shows that the effect
does not depend on the moment of data collection. Third, the pattern
of results found in Experiment 2 was in line with our hypothesis.
Conclusions and Practical Implications
The current findings suggest that, over time, experienced officers
become more dispositionally suspicious and confident, presumably
because of their exposure to competitive interactions, their socializa-
tion and experience within the police force, and their embracement of
police culture. Thus, socialization and exposure to certain situations
may cause changes in the personality of officers. However, in this
study generalized communicative suspicion (personality) was unre-
lated with lie bias (behavior). Instead, situational factors appeared to
have a greater impact. Indeed, novice officers, who were not dispo-
sitionally suspicious, made as many deception judgments as experi-
enced officers. In police-related situations, novice officers were as
suspicious as experienced officers. These findings suggest that novice
officers have not yet acquired the inner characteristics of their expe-
rienced peers but are able to behave like them.
This has a number of practical implications. No matter whether a
suspect is interviewed by an experienced or a novice officer, the
likelihood of this suspect’s statement being disbelieved is high re-
gardless of actual veracity. This may set into motion a process that
may produce false confessions and eventually wrongful convictions.
According to Leo and Drizin (2010), the lie bias—which may lead
officers to erroneously decide that an innocent person is guilty—may
lead the police in some countries to use an accusatorial interrogation
to obtain a confession. Unlike information-gathering interview ap-
proaches, accusatorial approaches increase the risk of false confes-
sions (Meissner et al., 2014). Therefore, the innocent suspect may end
up confessing. Police detectives can also influence the post admission
narrative (Leo & Drizin, 2010). Finally, confessions have a huge
influence over conviction rates (Kassin & Neumann, 1997). Thus, the
initial misclassification of an innocent suspect caused by police offi-
cers’ lie bias may have negative far-reaching consequences.
To solve this problem, the police should use systematic lie-
detection tools that work better than their intuitions and gut feelings.
If the officers’ veracity judgments were the result of using structured,
systematic, and valid procedures, then they would be less biased.
Recently, psychologists started to develop and test a number of
interviewing approaches to detect deception by creating or increasing
observable differences between truth tellers and liars (see Vrij &
Granhag, 2012, for a review). For example, because often lying is
cognitively more demanding than truth telling (Gombos, 2006;
Hauch, Blandón-Gitlin, Masip, & Sporer, 2015; Walczyk, Igou,
Dixon, & Tcholakian, 2013), further increasing the interviewees’
cognitive demand will be more detrimental to liars than truth tellers,
such that behavioral signs of cognitive load will be displayed by liars
(Vrij et al., 2008). One way of increasing cognitive load during the
interview is asking interviewees to describe the target event in the
reverse order rather than in the normal chronological order (Vrij et al.,
2008). Walczyk et al. (2005, 2012) developed a promising interview
procedure to detect deception based on a cognitive model of decep-
tion. Also, depleting the cognitive resources of suspects before the
interview negatively affects lying behavior and improves lie detection
(Blandon-Gitlin, Echon, & Pineda, 2013). Withholding the incrimi-
nating information that the interviewer possesses until the end of the
interview may result in liars providing statements that contradict the
available evidence (Hartwig, Granhag, & Luke, 2014). Finally, asking
unexpected questions to pairs of suspects when interviewing them
separately results in liars giving different answers to the same ques-
tions; conversely, truth tellers, who simply describe the real event
honestly, provide the same answers (Vrij et al., 2009).
If experienced officers were given specific guidelines based on
these evidence-based lie-detection approaches and could be con-
vinced to closely follow them, and if novice officers internalized the
notion that “the right thing to do” when questioning someone’s
credibility in police-related situations is to use systematic scientific
approaches (rather than being skeptical or distrustful), then the police
lie bias would presumably decrease and detection accuracy would
increase. The influence of veteran officers’ personality on their be-
havior would be circumvented because veteran officers judging ve-
racity could follow a set of available systematic guidelines instead of
having to resort to their overall impressions or gut feelings. Concern-
ing novice officers, their tendency to act “as an officer” in police-
related situations would be beneficial if this implied using systematic
procedures rather than behaving in a distrustful way.
 OFFICERS’ GENERALIZED COMMUNICATIVE SUSPICION AND VERACITY JUDGMENTS
Unfortunately, the limits of these new interviewing approaches
to detect deception and their vulnerability to countermeasures are
still not well known. Therefore, at present, their widespread use
may be premature (see Blandón-Gitlin, Fenn, Masip, & Yoo,
2014). However, they are promising tools for the future. It is our
hope that they will contribute to eradicate the police’s lie bias and
will help improve the justice system.
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 OFFICERS’ GENERALIZED COMMUNICATIVE SUSPICION AND VERACITY JUDGMENTS 181

Appendix

Generalized Communication Suspicion Scale and Interrogation Suspicion Scale

Generalized Communication Suspicion Scale Interrogation Suspicion Scale

1. Everyone lies, the person who says that they don’t is the biggest
liar of all
2. I often feel as if people aren’t being completely truthful with meⴱ
3. Most people only tell you what they think you want to hearⴱ
4. When I am in a conversation with someone, I frequently wonder
whether they are really telling me the truthⴱ
5. People rarely tell you what they’re really thinkingⴱ
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
1. Every suspect lies during an interrogation, the suspect who says
that they don’t is the biggest liar of allⴱ
2. When in my daily work I request information that may somehow
be related to a crime I feel that that people aren’t being completely
truthful with meⴱ
—
3. When I am interrogating someone, I frequently wonder whether
they are really telling me the truthⴱ
4. People rarely tell you what they’re really thinking when they have

to answer a police officers’ questions about their potential

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

involvement in specific criminal activitiesⴱ

6. The best policy is to trust people until proven wrong 5. The best policy as a police officer is to trust the people one is
interrogating until proven wrongⴱ
7. Dishonesty is a part of human natureⴱ 6. Dishonesty is a part of human nature when people are submitted to
a police interrogationⴱ
8. When I first meet someone, I assume that they are probably lying 7. When I know someone from prior interrogations, I assume that
to me about some thingsⴱ they are probably lying to me about some thingsⴱ
9. Most people are basically honestⴱ 8. Most people are basically honest when an officer interrogates them
about certain actions they are suspected of having committedⴱ
10. Anyone who completely trusts someone else is asking for troubleⴱ 9. Any police officer who completely trusts a suspect’s statement is
asking for trouble
11. When I ask a stranger for directions, I frequently wonder whether 10. When an officer is on duty and asks a stranger for directions, the
they are being truthful officer frequently should wonder whether the stranger is being
truthful
12. When I am talking to others, I tend to believe what they sayⴱ 11. When I am interrogating a suspect, I tend to believe what they sayⴱ
13. People seldom lie to meⴱ 12. People whom I have to interrogate seldom lie to meⴱ
14. Most people follow the saying “honesty is the best policy”ⴱ 13. Most suspects who know they are going to be interrogated follow
the saying “honesty is the best policy”ⴱ
Note. Asterisks denote items retained in Masip et al.’s (2005) Generalized Communication Suspicion Scale or in the current Interrogation Suspicion Scale.
For both scales, agreement with each item is measured on a 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) scale. Overall score is obtained by adding up the
ratings across all items after reversing ratings for items 6, 9, 12, 13, and 14 (Generalized Communication Suspicion Scale) or 5, 8, 11, 12, and 13
(Interrogation Suspicion Scale).
In creating the Interrogation Suspicion Scale, we could not adapt Item 3 of the Generalized Communication Suspicion Scale: “Most people only tell you
what they think you want to hear.” The higher the scores on this item, the more the respondent believes others lie. The version of this item for the
Interrogation Suspicion Scale would read, “During an interrogation, most suspects only tell you what they think you want to hear.” However, it may seem
far too obvious to most potential respondents that during a police interview most suspects do not tell the interviewer what he or she wants to hear (i.e.,
that they are guilty, which the officer thinks is the truth). Instead, suspects tend deny the police accusations and are reluctant to confess. Therefore, in the
Interrogation Suspicion Scale, the higher the scores on this item, the more the respondent believes others (here, suspects) tell the truth. So, the two versions
of the same item would measure opposite things in each scale. This posed a serious problem.
Some may argue that confession research shows that suspects readily tell the police what they want to hear (i.e., that suspects readily confess no matter
whether they are guilty or innocent). However, legal safeguards in Spain prevent the police from using confrontational interviewing approaches, which are
the ones that might increase the false confessions rate (Meissner et al., 2014). Also, Leo’s (1996) field research on police interrogations revealed that 36%
of suspects made no incriminating statement at all, and that only 24% made a full confession. More recently, Bull and Soukara (2010) reported real suspects’
confession rates of 39% (Study 2) and 38% (Study 3). Notwithstanding the fact that false confessions are a legitimate serious concern, the data suggest that
few officers would endorse the notion that suspects readily tell the interviewer what the interviewer wants to hear (i.e., a full confession). Even if a suspect
eventually confesses, she or he often first denies his/her involvement in the crime (Bull & Soukara, 2010).

Received April 2, 2015

Revision received October 9, 2015
Accepted October 29, 2015 䡲

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