The Police want to improve their ability to detect deception and want the help of a social Psychologist. How might this be achieved?

People lie for various reasons such as to avoid being punished, obtain a reward, to avoid embarrassment, to protect themselves from threats and to protect someone else from being punished.  There are many different methods that can be used to detect deception and many factors must be considered when doing so.  A good lie detector must imagine what it would feel like to be in the suspects position and then look for specific signs to suggest they are not being honest.  Research can help the detection of deception to become a lot more accurate, therefore when designing a study to measure the ability to discriminate between lies and truth, we must consider experiments which have been done in the past that contain useful methods and results.

People communicate with other people in many different ways, such as over the phone, face to face, other electronic means of communication and thro…(short extract)