In our last column we began a discussion of eye movements and their relationship to memory and creation of information. Memory is still very much a mystery, and many researchers consider it a process where bits and pieces from the mind and body help recreate the event in the mind.

For years researchers believed that all memories were held within the brain. Later it became apparent that memories could be triggered using any of the senses and the central nervous system (Gazzaniga 1988). Surprisingly, memories can even be stored in the muscle tissue to protect the brain from intensely painful memories. This apparently protects the mind from the depth of the emotional trauma. This phenomenon may be why transplant recipients report craving certain foods that they never liked previously.

There are some experiences that are easily recovered from our memory while others, the more mundane, are more difficult to retrieve from the mind. It seems that the more senses engaged during the memories construction, the easier it will be for an individual to recall the event. Those memories that have greater intensity also are more easily retrieved. Unique and emotional events increase the likelihood of a strong memory being created.

Memory and Theft

Highly emotional events and those relating to survival will be remembered more easily than everyday events. Consider the mental state of an individual who is about to steal. Their survival instinct triggers emotional, psychological, and even financial impacts on the mind and body as they commit the theft. Imagine what it must be like to be asked about a theft and have those emotional and psychological memories flood back into consciousness. Reliving the memory and the survival instinct requires time, and thus an observable delay by the individual.

Sometimes it requires an individual to use gestures or eye movements to help locate memories. In one research study participants were asked to watch a video and then tell the researchers about the stories content and flow. Then the participants had their arms restrained during the observation of the video. In the second observation it was difficult for the participants to remember parts of the story. It seems that the inability to use the hands and arms concealed some of the memories of the recently observed video.

The deceptive subject needs time to sort out the real memory and then construct a logical alternative that will not contradict any story he had previously told. Most people will communicate using three of the five senses—visual, auditory, and feelings.

An individual's communication using visuals requires the construction or retrieval of the mental picture and spatial awareness of the memory. When constructing a lie, visually there will be less detail and contradictions of spatial placements. However, a true visual memory will have details, colors, spatial arrangement, and point of view as part of the recall. If you have to construct a mental image of a room from scratch, imagine the complexities of this mental task.

Eye Movement Cues

An interviewer should track an individual's eye movements during the early stages of the conversation while going through biographical questions and development of rapport to establish where the eyes go during creation and recall. In a study we conducted with over 500 people we found that 71 percent of the participants looked to their left when recalling, 21 percent looked to their right, 5 percent had no identifiable norm, and 3 percent unfocused their eyes during recall.

About 7 to 12 percent of the population is left-handed. In our study 9 percent of the people were left-handed and 76 percent of the left-handers looked to their left when recalling information.

What kinds of questions might be useful to establish the recall or creative eye accessing cues? Clearly, any questions used by an interviewer to establish the pattern of eye movement needs to make sense in the context of the interview. Asking a subject what the offspring of a zebra would look like would require creation of the new creature, but there would be almost no context where this question would be appropriate.

Asking relevant questions that mask the interviewer's purpose can create an important behavioral reaction that, when placed in the context of testing a story, can determine whether the individual is recalling or creating information.

The following are some examples of questions that would require an individual to recall information: Who were the first three people you saw when you arrived at work this morning? What is your date of hire? What is a major intersection near your home?

Once you have established the dominant side of the brain for recall, you will have already established the creative side as being the opposite.

Developing Admissions

So, how might we use our knowledge of recall and creation during an interview to develop admissions?

First, we have to understand the context of the question and whether or not it makes sense for an individual to create an answer or simply recall it. If a person was asked to list three things that would make him more effective at his job and his eyes go to recall, we could surmise that the question had been asked of him before or he had prepared the answer in advance. For most people we would expect them to have to create a response.

As the questions moved to a discussion about a story, alibi, or development of an admission, our observations make it easier to determine if a response should be created or recalled.

For example, a young woman was questioned by one of the authors regarding the theft of loose diamonds. During the biographical questioning, it was determined that she recalled by looking to her left. Her responses during the interview indicated she was unlikely to have been involved in the theft, but the company felt she may have been using illicit drugs on the job. The questioning moved from the diamonds to experimentation with drugs and resulted in the following dialog:

INTERVIEWER: What types of drugs have you ever just experimented with?

SUBJECT: [looks to her left—recall] Well, ah...I have tried meth a couple times, coke once or twice, and, of course, marijuana.

INTERVIEWER: When was the last time you used any of those during working hours?

SUBJECT: [looks to her right—creation] Ah...about six months ago.

INTERVIEWER: And what was it that you used?

SUBJECT: [looks to her left—recall] Marijuana.

INTERVIEWER: I meant when was the very last time you used marijuana on the job?

SUBJECT: [looks to her right—creation]

INTERVIEWER: I mean the very last time.

SUBJECT: [looks to her right—creation]

INTERVIEWER: I mean the very last time.

SUBJECT: [looks to her left—recall] Just before I came in.

The subject's eye movements during this exchange helped in gaining an admission. Since marijuana was recalled and spontaneously said, it was likely a truthful response, but the timeframe for its use was created. In this case the six-month admission was a lie of minimization, which left additional development to be done. When the employee was asked again when the last time she used drugs during working hours, her eyes went to creation, which was likely to be another minimization. By stopping her from answering the question with another lie, it increased her belief that the interviewer must know the last time she used marijuana on the job.

Creation is not always a deception, and recall is not always the truth, but if one examines the context of the question, it can help sort out potential deceptions. This technique becomes less valuable in situations where the stories or alibis have been told multiple times. When a lie is created, it is simply moved to a memory and then is retrieved in the same way as something that was experienced. However, created lies almost always do not have the same level of detail, colors, emotions, or spatial awareness as a real memory. As the interviewer drills down into the details, it will require the liar to create information to fill in the gaps.

We had the opportunity to listen to a presentation by Dr. David Matsumoto on micro expressions at the Certified Forensic Interviewer Elite Training Day seminar in November. To establish the difficulty of identifying truth or deception, Dr. Matsumoto had everyone evaluate a series of videos and make judgments of the person's truthfulness. He then asked for the reasons why the person was ranked truthful or deceptive by the observers.

Some of the attendees made their decisions based on the individual's verbal response, others used emotion, some word choice, but many focused on physical behavior to reach their conclusion. It was interesting to hear what people were observing, but clearly the observations were at chance level of us making a correct judgment. There was no behavioral norm for us to observe, no real threat of punishment for the subject if he was caught lying, no strong emotion to conceal, no ability to question, so the deck was stacked against the observer.

What was most interesting, however, was the number of people who mentioned the individual was lying or telling the truth because he was looking right or left when he answered. These responses from the attendees appeared to be making reference to neuro-linguistic eye movement.

Dr. Matsumoto correctly called these observations into question, noting that twenty-three of twenty-four research studies showed no support for eye direction being a predictor for truth or deception. We were inundated with questions from participants about how these studies contradicted our training. In fact, there is no contradiction between our training and the studies quoted.

Let's take a step back and look at where these ideas originated and developed over the years.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming

Back in the early 1970s, Richard Bandler and John Grinder began to observe therapists who had unique abilities to connect with and change their patients' patterns of behavior. The observations they made were codified into what became known as Neuro-Lingusitic Programming™ or NLP™. It was a method of therapy to resolve the patient's problems or create a structure for repeatable success. The method relied on communication techniques, reframing, and anchoring to bring about change. If you have heard of Anthony Robbins, he became wealthy using these principles to teach people to be successful through positive change. Today, he leads programs with thousands in attendance to learn his approach.

Bandler and Grinder originally postulated that people have a primary basis of communication—visual, verbal, or feelings and emotions. While we can communicate on all these channels, we often have a preference for one. Visual people may use words like, "I don't like the looks of that" or "When you see someone say" to represent their preferred communication channel. The auditory might say, "I don't like the sound of that" or, perhaps, "That doesn't ring true." Those where feelings dominate use tactile phrases, grappling, "Sinking my teeth into it" or "Wrapping my head around it."

NLP suggests using the same channel as the person you are talking with in order to increase rapport and further your communication with them. The group also suggested that when people look left they are recalling something and right they are creating something not experienced. They also look in different places if they are communicating visually, verbally, or emotionally.

Law enforcement trainers took these ideas and used them, often incorrectly, by concluding if the person is creating, he is lying, or if he is recalling, he's truthful. The law enforcement trainers also made the blanket statement that when people look to the left they are recalling and when they look to the right they are creating. This was also incorrect since some people reverse the two or don't do it at all. Thus, these incorrect assumptions that creation is lying propagated a false, wide-spread belief throughout the law enforcement and loss prevention community.

Today, there are a number of trainers who point out the incorrectness of these assumptions and dismiss the idea that there is any value at all to this observation of the eyes. Their lack of understanding leaves a valuable tool out of the investigator's toolbox.

Determining Recall vs. Creation

Let's examine the movement of the eyes. In general, eye movement assists us in locating information in the mind. Much like movement and gestures, which also assist in the recovery of memories and speech, eye movement establishes that there is a memory search and additional thought taking place. This additional thought could either be of a creative or recall nature. There is no way to establish whether this is the recovery of a truthful detail or the creation of a deceptive component of the story. Shane often says that neuro-linguistic eye movement is either recall or creation, and our job is to validate which it is and what that means.

Recall and creative eye movement alone has nothing to do with truthfulness or deception. It simply tells us the person is doing additional thinking. The question then becomes, should this extra thinking be required for the person to answer the question?

The first step in making eye movements a useful tool is attempting to establish whether or not the individual has a pattern of eye movement associated with recall and creation. During the interviewer's establishing of the behavioral norm, he is attempting to identify patterns relating to short-term memory recall, long-term recall, and creative narratives by the subject. People have individual patterns that must be established before one can determine recall or creation.

Information used frequently is kept readily available in our memory, such as our name, address, date of birth, and other useful information. Less useful data is stored and requires a memory search to retrieve it from storage. Asking about the individual's date of hire or his job history requires a more in-depth search of the memory. We might also ask a question of an individual that requires the creation of an answer. For example, tell me three things that you would change about your job to make you more effective? Clearly, the three things offered could be truthful or untruthful, but we can generally establish they were created. However, if the subject had been asked the question previously or had anticipated the question and created an answer he simply had to retrieve it from his memory.

A lie previously created is simply recalled from memory and repeated to remain consistent. If we agreed to tell a story about playing cards with a group last night when we did not, it would be a lie. If questioned we simply retrieve the agreed-upon alibi. An observer would expect us to use our eyes in a recall fashion to retrieve the outline of our deception. However, as he probes for details of a false story, it requires creation of new information.

The details of our lie have been agreed upon only in general terms, and those established details are stored in our memory. When the interviewer begins to question other aspects of the alibi that had not been created, it requires additional thought and creation to construct the answer.

In the alibi relating to playing cards the previous evening, nothing else in the way of details have been agreed upon. The subject must create each and every component of the story making sure that it does not contradict other information available to the interviewer. In this situation asking the subject what type of card game they played should result in a creative effort by the subject to expand the details of the story. Follow-up questions such as who sat to your left and right, who was the big winner and loser, could additionally validate the creative nature of the person's response. The person should not have to create information if he is responding truthfully.

Once a deception has been created, it now merely has to be retrieved accurately from the subject's memory and repeated consistently. The use of the mental searching technique is most effective when obtaining that first untainted story from the subject and then probing for details. Once a story has been told several times, the need for creation diminishes, and it is more likely the individual will simply recall the details already created and accurately repeat them.

The context of the story, the question type should tell the interviewer whether or not it is necessary for the subject to engage in a creative response. In our next column we will examine question types that can encourage a recall or creative response from the subject and discuss how to evaluate the response.

We have undoubtedly taken some historical liberties with our discussions in the last two columns about the history of interrogation, so we continue the folly by predicting the future of it as well. With the smudges wiped from our crystal ball, we will gaze forward through the foggy mists of time and divine the future...pet rock...brick phones...gold at $600! Ah, here we go.

Changing Regulations

Interviewing and interrogation will be under attack in the next decade by a host of critics attempting to force changes that fit their agendas. This is a similar pattern to the way the polygraph was attacked in the late 1970s and '80s. It began with academics criticizing the validity and scientific basis for the polygraph. They were then joined by unions who strongly opposed the use of the polygraph in an employment environment. The cause was then picked up by partisan politics, which ended up passing The Employee Polygraph Protection Act that largely prohibited pre-employment and periodic polygraph testing by private companies. Although some entities, such as the federal government, police departments, armored car services, and nuclear facilities, were exempt, most of the pre-employment and periodic polygraph testing by companies was prohibited. Even specific issue testing was highly restricted by the Polygraph Protection Act.

It is unlikely the interviewing process will be restricted by the passage of a law through Congress since the private sector is highly organized through its lobbyists in the National Retail Federation, Retail Industry Leaders Association, and others. It is much more likely that any restrictions to employer interviews will come as part of regulations put out by the Department of Labor or other government entities.

For example, the U.S. Department of Education has recently altered guidelines for how colleges and universities should react to sexual assaults on campus. The institutions have now been ordered to consider sexual-assault allegations under the civil standard of evidence, rather than the clear-and-convincing standard now used. This moves the guilty finding to a "preponderance of evidence" required in a civil lawsuit, 51 percent, versus the "clear-and-convincing standard" of 80 percent, or the criminal requirement of "beyond a reasonable doubt."

The preponderance of evidence has already resulted in a miscarriage of justice in South Dakota where a young male college student was accused of a sexual assault by a female coed. Using the preponderance-of-evidence reasoning, he was found guilty and banned from campus. During the independent police investigation, the female coed was found to have lied, and the male student was exonerated. However, the university has yet to rescind its finding and reinstate the male student. Effectively, the Department of Education's change of guidelines has modified the standard of proof, placing the burden on the accused while giving the accuser an unfair advantage.

There are a number of other examples where federal regulations have been changed, modifying business practices in place of a law being passed by Congress. It is likely with the polarized political environment today, we will see more use of regulations to control agendas, rather than the passage of laws. This may result in a Miranda-style statement being required in the private sector.

Changing Interview "Style"

If we look to the United Kingdom in the 1980s, their entire policing philosophy relating to interview and interrogation was changed as a result of several high-profile miscarriages of justice. The academics examining police practices and politicians caused a revamping of the interview-and-interrogation process, replacing it with what was commonly referred to as PEACE. The acronym PEACE stands for:

■ Planning and preparation

■ Engage and explain

■ Account clarification and challenge

■ Closure

■ Evaluation

Effectively the PEACE model prohibited the current style of interrogation used in the U.S. It prohibited the use of a rationalization and a persuasive argument to obtain a confession. Instead, the approach is much more of a cognitive interview encouraging in-depth and detailed accountings of the person's alibi or sequence of events.

The change in the United Kingdom's approach to criminal cases has started to find its way into the Canadian law enforcement model. The Canadian model of interrogation was confrontational, using a direct accusation and rationalization to obtain an admission. The Canadian courts have slowly been undermining this type of interrogation, seeming to swing their model closer to that of the United Kingdom and away from the United States.

Here in the United States we have begun to see a similar push with the advent of DNA. There have been a number of cases across the U.S. where miscarriages of justice incarcerated innocent people. In some of these cases there were instances of false confessions that caused further criticism of the interrogation style being used here in the United States. The critics, it seems, think that interrogation focused on confession is coercive and immoral.

As a result of the trends in the United Kingdom, Canada, and here in the United States, we can undoubtedly expect a push to alter our current interrogation methods. It would not be unexpected for unions to join with the academics and university innocence projects in an attempt to force their will on the current interrogation styles.

Changing Demographics

With the change in population growth indicating that Latinos will be the majority in the United States in the coming years, we should anticipate changes that will relate to language and culture.

Since the early 1970s Generations X and Y, plus the millennials have initiated changes as well, based upon the way they work and think. We have developed the non-confrontational approach to interrogation, which meets the needs of the newer generations to collaborate, rather than simply be instructed how to do a job.

Based on the current need for Hispanic interviewers, we anticipate several things to occur. First, competent Spanish-speaking interviewers will be in high demand across the U.S. As Spanish-speaking interviewers are being trained, there will still be a need to resolve cases that will overwhelm the current supply of bilingual interviewers.

Because of the shortage of Spanish-speaking interviewers, the use of telephone interviewing will increase so organizations can maximize the use of the existing Spanish-speaking assets they have. Having bilingual investigators available at a central point by phone will allow companies to meet their needs in the coming years.

Changing Technology

There may be some organizations that will move from telephone interviewing to using something similar to Skype or audiovisual conferencing to conduct interviews. Although there will be some advantage to being able to observe the employee, we believe that many organizations will continue to use telephone conferencing to avoid having a picture of the interviewer available to the associate. People construct a more favorable appearance based on a voice than they might have if they saw a picture of the person speaking to them. The expanded and continued use of the telephone or similar type of device will be a foundation of future loss prevention strategies.

As exception-based reporting continues to be refined, we also expect employees will be identified earlier in their theft schemes and removed from employment. As a result, the overall admissions made by dishonest employees will likely reduce in the coming years.

There is also a trend among a number of organizations to return to general loss interviewing at high-shrink locations. We think many organizations will begin to develop high-quality interviewing teams who will handle the interviews for store and district personnel. These teams will be the closers for the loss prevention department, taking the initial case development and holding the final conversation with the associate to obtain the admission. This will likely result in a more thorough examination of the associate's dishonesty, and it will result in better written and audio statements from the employee.

With the current trend in law enforcement to record interviews and interrogations, we expect that this will spill over into the private sector. A number of organizations are currently taking audio statements in place of handwritten confessions, and we expect to see an expansion to the recording of the entire conversation with the associate.

As entire interviews are conducted, it is likely that there will be much more monitoring and measuring of interviewer effectiveness by managers and senior executives. Initially there may be resistance, but as the costs for recording equipment come down, it is likely to become a standard for the industry.

Automated Telephone Interviews

Our speculation could go on and on, but we thought we might talk about an idea we had for telephone interviewing. We are thinking of having the dishonest associate call a number and receive an introductory statement indicating their guilt is known. The employee would then be asked to select from a series of prompts:

■ If your theft activity was the result of peer pressure, press one.

■ If your theft activity was the result of financial pressure, press two.

■ If your theft activity was the result of impulsiveness, press three.

The associate would then be offered a pre-recorded rationalization followed by an assumptive question. The prototype might be only a few years away.

The next decade will be an interesting time with political and technical changes on the horizon.

In the last issue we discussed the past history of interrogation beginning with the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to the Salem witch trials of the 1690s. This column will move forward and review the more recent past, beginning in the late 1800s to the present practices of loss prevention and the police.

The Third Degree

The third degree, trickery, and deceit mentioned by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Brown v. Mississippi decision has its origins in New York City. Inspector Thomas Brynes headed up the New York City detective bureau from 1880 to 1895, when he was forced to resign. Ever the political savvy officer, Brynes was a pro at self-promotion, choreographing arrests to bolster his image with the public. He was critical of Scotland Yard's ineffectiveness at solving the Jack-the-Ripper murders in London claiming he would have solved the case long ago.

Brynes coined the phrase "the third degree" to describe his technique of eliciting confessions from criminal suspects. The first degree was the policeman who apprehended the suspect, the second degree was the investigating detective, and the third degree was Brynes and his tactics. He would use any means to obtain a confession from someone he believed was guilty, including trickery, deceit, or physical beatings. Besides beatings, Brynes would also use phony witnesses and staged encounters between suspects to convince them their guilt was known.

In 1931 the Wickersham Commission, examining law enforcement practices and prohibition, found the use of the third degree as practiced by Brynes was widespread across the United States. August Vollmer, the primary author of the commission's report who later became chief of the Berkeley (CA) Police Department is considered by many to be the father of modern law enforcement methods, originating many of the concepts of police work used today.

World War II

Interestingly, after the widespread use of the third degree, Germany and the United States during World War II developed similar interrogation strategies to obtain information from prisoners of war. Hanns Scharff, master interrogator at Dulag Luft, was responsible for interrogating airmen captured during bombing raids over Europe. It was said that he never failed to obtain information from the downed airmen. His interrogation strategy employed a sophisticated intelligence-gathering system cataloguing the minutia of everyday life on the Allied bomber bases. Using this information he would convince airmen the information was already known, thus opening conversations that would confirm and add new information to the database.

In one anecdote Hans was walking with an airman in the woods holding an innocent conversation when he made mention of the change of color of the tracer rounds flash on the fighter aircraft. The airmen innocently told him this was to let the pilot know he was almost out of ammunition. During a later dogfight with a German ace, there was a change in the American's tracer color and the German pilot disengaged from the dogfight in order to let the American live.

Similar to Hanns Scharff was Major Sherwood F. Moran, USMC. Major Sherwood was assigned to interrogate captured Japanese in the Pacific theater of World War II. The Major had extensive experience with the Japanese culture having lived there for years along with a native's speaker's ability with the language. Major Sherwood began each interrogation telling the soldier he was now safe. The conversation then turned to the common Japanese experience that they both shared before he began delving into the intelligence gathering process.

Both the United States and Germany had extensive intelligence operations to support their troops. The U.S. had sophisticated camps on both coasts dedicated to the interrogation of POWs from both theaters of the war. These operations were unlike the Japanese, Korean, Chinese, or Vietnamese prison camps where Americans were tortured or brainwashed. It is interesting that the U.S. chose enhanced interrogation methods with terrorists after the success they achieved using non-confrontational interrogation during World War II on both sides of the conflict.

Polygraph

The beginning of an emotional approach to interrogation can be traced to the polygraph. Polygraph examiners found themselves having to interrogate suspects without using evidence. In most situations a suspect was taking a polygraph because he was suspected and had not confessed based on the information available to investigators. The examiner could use the polygraph as a prop during interrogation and then repeat the evidence available, but this was a generally ineffective means of interrogation.

Early polygraph examiners were in a decidedly difficult position since the technique had not been validated and testing sequences were in the early stages of development. As the polygraph examiners conducted more tests they observed physical and verbal responses from the subjects prior to the test that helped them reach a correct conclusion. The polygraph pretest gave the examiner a check and balance against later polygraph charts to assist in a correct truth or deception conclusion. If the examiner observed a deceptive pretest from the subject, he would expect to see deceptive charts during the testing sequence, or vice versa—truthful pretest, truthful charts.

This was an effective means of identifying the subject's true status independent of the polygraph. In the mid-1970s Douglas Wicklander began working on using the pretest independent of the polygraph to investigate cases. The behavioral interview became a standard investigative tool to resolve general loss and specific issue cases in situations where the polygraph was too expensive or time-consuming to use. In fact, the behavioral interview took the place of the polygraph after Congress passed the Employee Polygraph Protection Act, which limited an employer's ability to use the examination.

Emotional Interrogation

Polygraph examinations also provided the seminal point for development of the emotional interrogation of a suspect. The early polygraph examiners had several significant needs during the interrogation of a guilty suspect. First, the examiners needed an additional check and balance to assure the accuracy of their conclusion. They already had the polygraph pretest, which would confirm the accuracy of their decision, but they needed something in addition when they were dealing with deceptive charts. What they used was a direct accusation at the beginning of the interrogation to elicit behavioral clues from the suspect that were typical of innocence or guilt. A statement such as, "Our investigation clearly indicates you're responsible for [insert crime]." The subject's reaction to this statement helped the examiner confirm a deceptive conclusion. Generally, the deceptive subject reacted to this statement with less aggressiveness than a truthful person, thus adding another confirmation to the examiner's conclusion.

The examiner now had to interrogate the deceptive subject, but it was unlikely that simply using the evidence or information developed during the investigation would be sufficient to obtain a confession. Generally, that information had been used by the investigator already, and its use had been unproductive. The answer to this problem came from sales. The salesman provides his potential customer with benefits of the product to satisfy the customer's needs. In the post-polygraph interrogation the subject's needs tend to revolve around his self-image.

The polygraph examiner could now talk about why the individual participated in the incident, rather than discuss how the crime was committed. In a factual discussion of how the crime was committed, even a small error by the investigator in restating the method of the crime could be disastrous. The polygraph examiners were able to avoid this by simply discussing the reasons why the individual became involved in the incident. This provided the benefit of a face-saving device for the subject, and an opportunity for the examiner to interrogate at length without discussing the evidence.

Sales Techniques

Sales also provided the early examiners with additional helpful components. The way a salesman would handle a customer's objection, such as "I don't need more life insurance," was to agree, yet turn the objection around into another reason why the customer should buy. The examiner, would likely hear, "I wouldn't do something like that. I have money in the bank." In the same way that the salesman handled the objection, the examiner handled the explanatory denial by agreeing and then changing the rationalization impulsiveness to support the individual's self-image.

Another component coming from sales was recognizing the buy signs the customer was ready to make a purchase. The examiners noted the individual making a decision to confess would drop their heads, become quiet, and perhaps even tear up. Recognizing the person was ready to confess, the examiner needed to ask for the admission. Salesman quickly learned if they asked a customer if he wanted to buy their product they were often rejected. Instead, the salesman asked for the sale assumptively. "Do you want 10 boxes or 15?" "Do you want to take delivery today or first thing tomorrow?" The examiners offered a choice question based on the rationalization they were using. "Did you plan it out or do it on the spur of the moment?" "Was it your idea or someone else's?" Selection of either of the choices was the individual's first admission to the crime.

It was the early polygraph examiners' technique that combined behavioral observations, behavioral interview, and the emotional appeal to the suspect into what we use in today's interrogations. In our next column we will discuss the future of the interrogative process.

We were asked to discuss the history of interrogation at a conference along with its present situation and possible implications for the future. When we originally began thinking about this project, we thought it might be as simple as doing a book report relating the facts as compiled by some prestigious historian. Unfortunately, we could not find a book like this. Our search did uncover one text called The History of Interrogation, which seemed to be the answer to our prayers. With great anticipation we explored the pages that listed interrogations throughout the ages. None of the listed interrogations contained any of the questioning techniques employed by our ancestors. However, the final sentence of many of the descriptions of the interrogations contained the words "hanged," "drawn," and "quartered." It seems our ancestors were nothing if not thorough.

Since we have neither a degree in history nor the academic qualifications to produce a definitive history of interrogation, you will have to be satisfied with the history of interrogation according to W-Z. What we hope to do here is to follow some threads of history and weave them into a story of how we got to today's strategies and techniques. Fortunately, we have been part of much of the recent history of interrogation.

In the Beginning...Literally

The earliest interrogation we could locate seemed to revolve around the theft of an apple. On the surface it would seem harmless, but apparently had major implications for the human race if one reads the biblical record. The story of Adam and Eve as told in the Bible's book of Genesis 3.8–12 relates the serpent's temptation of Eve to eat an apple from the forbidden tree.

Adam and Eve hide themselves from God's presence after eating the apple.

God calls to Adam "Where art thou?" and Adam responds "I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself." When God then asks Adam if he had eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam responds that his wife had told him to.

The resolution of this case was probably easier than most, since according to the Bible, Adam and Eve were the only possible suspects. However, if we examine this first interrogation, several things become evident.

First, there is a change in the behavior of Adam and Eve—they now recognize that they are naked and hide themselves from God. When we think about our experiences in today's interviews, we often see changes in the individual's verbal and physical behavior because of their fear of detection.

Second, we see the first evidence of a rationalization as Adam blames Eve for initiating the eating of the apple. Here Adam shifts the blame to Eve, offering an excuse to God for the reason he partook of the apple. It seems rationalization is an integral part of hu-man nature.

We might also take another example from the biblical record and the wisdom of King Solomon. The book of Kings reports the following account of a case that was brought before King Solomon's court in Jerusalem.

Two women came to King Solomon and stood before him. One woman [1] said: "My Lord, this woman and I dwell in the same house. She arose during the night and took my son from my side while I was asleep, and lay him in her bosom, and her dead son she laid in my bosom."

The other woman [2] replied: "It is not so! My son is the live one and your son is the dead one!"

The first woman [1] responded: "It is not so! Your son is the dead one and my son is the living one!"

The King Solomon said: "This woman [2] claims 'My son is the live one and your son is the dead one,' and this woman [1] claims 'Your son is the dead one and my son is the living one!'"

King Solomon said, "Cut the living child in two, and give half to one and half to the oth-er."

The woman [2] turned to the King, because her compassion was aroused for her son, and said: "Please my Lord, give her the living child and do not kill it!"

The King spoke "Give her [2] the living child, and do not kill it, for she is his mother!"

This may be the first example of statement analysis. King Solomon had been given great wisdom by God, and he used it here in the analysis of the two women statements. "This woman [2] claims 'My son is the live one and your son is the dead one,' and this woman [1] claims 'Your son is the dead one and my son is the living one!'"

The positioning of the words "my son" is important in analyzing this statement. Woman 2 places what is most important to her at the beginning of the sentence while woman 1 abdicates the child to the end of the sentence. Further evidence of her love for the child is contained in the final statement of the woman where she wishes to preserve the child's life, rather than have the baby killed.

This example probably is also the first written example of a bluff (killing the child) during an interrogation. The deceitful woman gave herself away with her cruelty encouraging the King to sever the child, thus further providing convincing proof to the onlookers of her lie.

Other Early Techniques

Using the fact that we experience physiological changes when there is a fear of the action, our ancestors recognized an advantage that they could use to resolve questions of truthfulness. One of the physiological observations that were made concerned the dryness of the mouth that occurred when someone was deceptive.

In China circa 1000 BC, individuals were told to place uncooked rice in their mouths and hold it while they were questioned. The truthful individual whose mouth contained saliva would spit out wet globular pieces of rice while the deceptive individuals would spit out dry rice kernels. Here the physiological response to the fear of detection causes the deceptive individual's mouth to dry as a result of the natural diuretic response to increased stress.

In India around 500 BC, they made use of the sacred donkey as a means of detecting deception. A donkey was placed in a tent and the suspects were told the donkey was sacred and had a direct link to God. Each of the suspects was told to enter the tent and pull on the donkey's tail. When the guilty party pulled on the tail, the donkey would bray and identify the person responsible for the crime. The innocent subjects entered the tent and pulled on the donkey's tail knowing that God would exonerate them of the crime. However, the guilty individual, fearing detection, did not pull on the tail and left the tent. The priest then examined each of the suspect's hands. Unbeknownst to the suspects, the priest had coated the donkey's tail with lamp black (soot) so the suspect without soot on his hands was identified as the guilty party. Here, our ancestors recognized individuals' change of behavior as a result of their fear of detection.

Supposedly in Africa, suspects were asked to pass an ostrich egg to one another and if one dropped it he was the guilty party. The physiological basis of this test was probably the idea that the more nervous individual would be more likely to drop the egg because of their fear of detection. In addition, they would likely be more distracted handling the egg, increasing the probability of damaging it.

During the Middle Ages people turned to torture and humiliation to extract confessions and punish the transgressors. The torturers constructed unbelievably terrible devices to cause pain to extract a confession from the unwilling. From the rack, which stretched the secured legs and arms by pulling in opposite directions, to the Iron Maiden, which confined the individual inside a tube containing sharp spikes that pressed into the body from all directions, each was designed to cause excruciating pain over a long period of time. The interrogator's perfected many of their designs during the Spanish and Medieval Inquisitions carried out by the Church to identify heretics. Scholars vary on the number of people killed using these devices during the inquisitions, but place it between 40,000 and 100,000 people killed.

In 1692 the Salem witch trials began in the United States. These trials resulted in the hanging of nineteen men and women accused of being witches. Some said that witches could be identified by being bound and thrown into water. If they came to the surface and floated they were a witch, however if they drowned they were innocent. The Salem witch trials are one of the first uses of taking a deposition and preserving a court record of legal proceedings we could find in the United States. The defendants and witnesses testimony was transcribed and became a permanent record of the interrogation. It was only in the fall of 1692 that the court refused to allow testimony relating to apparitions supposedly observed by witnesses. These apparitions were the basis of testimony that convicted many of the people in the spring when the witch trials began.

From these observations, it is clear that our ancestors recognized there were behavioral changes associated with attempts at deception, and they devised a variety of means to identify and test an individual's truthfulness. In our next column we will begin to identify the origins of today's techniques and forecast where interviewing may be in the coming years.

Our favorite magazine is ten years old. Ten years! These years have gone by so quickly. Congratulations to Jim Lee, Jack Trlica, and the LP Magazine staff for ten years of providing good reading and a visionary platform of communication for the industry.

Things seem to slip through the cracks in the rush of cases and day-to-day business. We poured over LP Magazine's last issue, which contained a timeline of loss prevention for the last ten years. What a flood of memories—people, places, cases, new ideas. What a ten years it was. Thank you for letting this column be part of the magazine's success. The publisher has kindly agreed to renew our column for another year.

Dave's high school English teacher, Mrs. Polack, would be sooooo astounded! Having read Dave's essays for four years, she was ready to take an early retirement. How often can you write Rule 19a at the top of a paper and not become bored. For the uninitiated, Rule 19a equals "trite." According to Mrs. Polack, trite means "lacking in freshness or effectiveness because of constant use; [oh no] cliché." We hope you have found something interesting or useful in our columns, despite Mrs. Polack's critique.

We have written almost sixty columns, ranging from the interpretation of behavior to report writing and testimony. We have addressed questions from the field along with career development. Each of these areas helped us better understand the interview process and how it applies in our industry.

Admissions and Implications

From our readers' comments, we found they particularly appreciated our commentary on the interview process. One of the areas that we discussed in some detail over several issues was the development of an admission and eliciting admissions of other employees' theft activity. When we started to think about the development process we initially looked at it as the endgame of the interview. However, after we started to draft the column, our thinking on the topic became markedly different. Instead of the endgame of the interview, development is strongly tied to how the interview is begun and the strategies employed in the opening moments of the conversation.

For example, if the interviewer elected to use a direct accusation—accusing the dishonest associate of stealing what was known from the investigation—the resulting admission tended to be lower, because the associate knew or strongly suspected what the investigation had revealed. The direct accusation also failed to gather intelligence from the dishonest employee's behavior about other methods of theft activity at the company. In addition, the direct accusation increased the level of resistance to an admission by encouraging the dishonest associate to make denials.

The direct accusation also revealed strongly what the investigator knew and, once it was revealed, it limited the interviewer's ability to determine when the subject was still lying. By revealing his evidence early, the investigator helps the subject identify the limits of the investigator's knowledge. The subject then knows what he may continue to conceal.

Another column addressed an additional problem area related to development—obtaining implications of other employees involved in theft activities. Previous research at Service Merchandise Corporation in the 1980s indicated about 20 percent of their employees had knowledge of other people stealing at the organization. In order to explore how an interviewer might increase his implications, we decided to examine our case files to determine the frequency of implications.

An examination of Wicklander-Zulawski and Associates case files indicated about 30 percent of employees made implications about another associate stealing. An interesting sidenote related to our examination of the files was the age dispersion of the employees who had knowledge of others stealing. We found that the employees in the 18- to 25-year-old range accounted for 72 percent of the people with knowledge. Those employees between ages 26 and 32 accounted for an additional 17 percent. When these two groups are combined they account for almost 90 percent of the employees who admitted knowing of another associate involved in theft activity. Clearly, one can assume that the greatest level of theft and knowledge of theft activity comes from the younger population. If we go back to Dr. Hollinger's early research on employee theft, we find a similar high-risk group in the late teens through mid-20s identified as being thieves.

Statistics of Success for the Wicklander-Zulawski Method

Another important statistic came to light when we examined our files for audios and videos we had reviewed for companies. We were primarily looking for whether or not the interviewer had used our non-confrontational approach in conducting the interview. We divided these 96 cases into the following categories:

• Full W-Z method used, presented well with little or no errors: N=44
• Partial W-Z method used, done well enough to count, but with a number of missing parts or errors: N=28
• W-Z method not used: N=22

When we examined these against whether or not the employee made an admission, we found that using either the full or partial W-Z method resulted in a confession 68 percent of the time. Unfortunately, we did not have the complete case facts relating what the investigator knew prior to the interview, so many of these could have been cold or implication cases—as a result, the actual confession rate may be much higher.

Those investigators using their own methods obtained a confession only 27 percent of the time and no confession 73 percent of the time.

Interestingly, we also found those interviewers using the W-Z method had admissions three times higher than those who got a confession using their own interview styles. Also, those interviewers using the W-Z method had confessions disclosing a much wider range of thefts and frauds types, implications, and policy violations then the non-W-Z method interviewers.

Promoting Yourself as a Business

Another column dealt with promoting the business. Think of yourself as a business; you are one in every sense of the word. You have a balance sheet with money coming in and out of your checking account, as well as the marketing and sales of your product—you.

There are three keys when promoting a business. First is having a marketing plan that actively brands you as someone who can perform. Number two is sales; selling yourself through your efforts and performance to provide a recognizable return on investment to those interested in you. Finally the key to it all is writing. Each report, resume, or email provides the reader with an indication of who you are and the quality of work you will perform. A poorly written report or resume reflects on who you really are.

A close fourth key in promoting a business is to associate yourself with or hire the best people you can find. Associating yourself with the best performers will make you a better employee and investigator. Hire someone who is capable of taking your job. Not only is it smart to create a succession plan, but it will also keep you on your toes and running.

The Future

Our next column is going to deal with an area we have never written about before, which is the history of interviewing. We are presenting at RILA in April on the history of interviewing. How did we get to this point using these techniques? While attempting to answer that question, we will also try to predict the future of interviewing in the coming decades. How might the interview process evolve over the coming decades?

If you happen to be at RILA, we would love to have you join us while we take a historical look at the past and predict the future. For those of you who may not be able to make the convention, we will summarize our thoughts in our upcoming columns.

For years the public sector has used the phone as a means of doing interviews for investigative follow-up, but less often as a means of confronting the suspect. While the telephone interview is not the norm in today's retail world, it helps to sometimes think of new ways to attack old problems.