Police, personality and the ability to deceive

Effectiveness as an undercover operative or human source (informant) handler relies on the believability of police in fictious roles, yet the use of deception by law enforcement in covert fields of policing and criminal interviews remains relatively underexplored in the literature. Moreover, selection processes for these critical police roles do not currently include a test of deception ability. This study investigates the lie production and truth production ability of 50 Australian police officers-in-training by comparing their results on a game of deception with their personality traits as tested by the HEXACO-PI-R-100 item version, the Short-D3 and the MSCEIT. Results indicate that sex, age, dark triad traits and emotional intelligence have no relationship with either truth or lie production. HEXACO results indicate low social self-esteem was related to high lie production ability. Further research is needed to explore extraversion, social skills, and confidence as they relate to the credibility of a ‘storyteller’.