Criminal Psychology
PSYC 275
Kellogg Community College
Extra Credit Option

Research and review 5 scholarly and professional journal articles on the topic of detecting deception. You will then provide the reference and an annotation for each article. In essence, the paper will be a 5 item annotated bibliography on the topic of “detecting deception”.

WHAT IS AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY?
An annotated bibliography is a list of citations to books, articles, and documents. Each citation is followed by a brief (no more than 150 words) descriptive and evaluative paragraph, the annotation. The purpose of the annotation is to inform the reader of the nature, relevance, accuracy, and quality of the sources cited (i.e. a brief critique).
ANNOTATIONS VS. ABSTRACTS
Abstracts are the purely descriptive summaries often found at the beginning of scholarly journal articles or in periodical indexes. Annotations are descriptive and critical; they expose the author's point of view, clarity and appropriateness of expression, and authority.
THE PROCESS
Creating an annotated bibliography calls for the application of a variety of intellectual skills: concise exposition, succinct analysis, and informed library research.
First, locate and record citations to books, periodicals, and documents that may contain useful information and ideas on the topic. Briefly examine and review the actual items. Then choose those works that provide a variety of perspectives on the topic.
Cite the book, article, or document using the appropriate style.
Write a concise annotation that summarizes the central theme and scope of the book or article. Include one or more sentences that (a) evaluate the authority or background of the author, (b) comment on the intended audience, (c) compare or contrast this work with another you have cited, or (d) explain how this work illuminates the bibliography topic.

Examples:
Feeley, D. H., deTurck, M. A., & Young, M. J. (1995). Baseline familiarity in lie detection. Communication Research Reports, 12(2), 160 – 169.
	One area reviewed within this study was the variable of gender as it relates to the accuracy in detecting deception. Results indicated that there were no significant differences between genders as they related to accuracy in judgment.	

Kassin, S. M., & Fong, C. T. (1999). “I’m innocent!”: Effects of training on judgments of truth and deception in the interrogation room. Law and Human Behavior, 23, 499 – 516.
	The authors, researchers from Williams College, examine data collected concerning the ability of trained and untrained students to correctly distinguish deception from truth. Subjects viewed tapes of mock suspects during an interrogation and were asked to determine whether suspects were lying or truthful in there responses. Their results indicated that although training did not appear to increase overall accuracy rates, it did positively correlate to both increased confidence by the subjects in their judgments, as well as with the number of reasons the subjects cited for making their judgments. One limitation noted in the study was that the subjects were college students (not actual professionals) and their training was a condensed version of that given to actual officers (Reid Technique). An attempt to resolve this issue was provided in the following reference.

Kassin, S. M., & Meisner, C. A. (2002). “He’s guilty!”: Investigator bias in judgments of truth and deception. Law and Human Behavior, 26, 469 – 480.  
	In an attempt to modify his previous work concerning the detection of deception, Kassin (and Meisner) utilizes a similar approach (from the Kassin and Fong, 1999 research) in the measurement of the accuracy of detecting deception. However, in this research Kassin compensates for one of the primary limitations of the preceding study by using professional law enforcement officers who have had complete (law enforcement) training as well as on the job experience. Their results support their hypothesis as they demonstrate law enforcement officers having no greater accuracy in detecting deception than the trained or untrained students. However, they do note that the law enforcement officers tend to identify more “false alarms” (false positives, also known as “response bias”) by labeling more truth tellers as being deceitful. Similarly, the level of training also positively correlated to the number of suspect behaviors interpreted by the subjects as indicative of lying. Although the study does utilize professional officers within the data collection it does not differentiate between levels of experience or training within the officer subject pool (only indicating that as a group they had an average of 13.7 years experience).