"Don’t answer the question you were asked. Answer the question you wish you were asked." —Robert McNamara, describing the lessons he learned during his time as Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War (Morris, Williams, & Ahlberg, 2004)
The strategy above, often employed by politicians, can be disastrous when used by a witness on the stand. Juries can tell right away when someone is being evasive. But how exactly does people’s evasion detection work, and what triggers it?
A recent article in the Journal of Experimental Psychology gives some insight as to what kind of responses are considered “dodges.” Typically, people’s dodge detection is not “set on high”; meaning that people don’t notice a dodge unless they are specifically looking for one or the respondent fumbles the answer. People will also notice a dodge when the question answered is vastly different from the one that was asked.
Most people don’t notice small dodges though. Evidence from the experiments shows that most people will ignore the dodge as long as the answer is cohesive and on a somewhat similar subject to the question. One way to crank-up people’s natural dodge detection is to have them pay special attention to the content of the question, for example bny showing them the text of the question on a screen.
In modern courtrooms, displaying the text of questions and answers on a screen for the jury to see has become de rigueur. Therefore, when a deposition is video is played, or some testimony is being read back, the witnesses evasiveness will become magnified if the scrolling text is shown along with the testimony on the screen.
The artful dodger: Answering the wrong question the right way.
Rogers, Todd; Norton, Michael I.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, Vol 17(2), Jun 2011, 139-147. doi: 10.1037/a0023439
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xap/17/2/139/
Article in Science Daily about the research:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110505111945.htm
The strategy above, often employed by politicians, can be disastrous when used by a witness on the stand. Juries can tell right away when someone is being evasive. But how exactly does people’s evasion detection work, and what triggers it?
A recent article in the Journal of Experimental Psychology gives some insight as to what kind of responses are considered “dodges.” Typically, people’s dodge detection is not “set on high”; meaning that people don’t notice a dodge unless they are specifically looking for one or the respondent fumbles the answer. People will also notice a dodge when the question answered is vastly different from the one that was asked.
Most people don’t notice small dodges though. Evidence from the experiments shows that most people will ignore the dodge as long as the answer is cohesive and on a somewhat similar subject to the question. One way to crank-up people’s natural dodge detection is to have them pay special attention to the content of the question, for example bny showing them the text of the question on a screen.
In modern courtrooms, displaying the text of questions and answers on a screen for the jury to see has become de rigueur. Therefore, when a deposition is video is played, or some testimony is being read back, the witnesses evasiveness will become magnified if the scrolling text is shown along with the testimony on the screen.
The artful dodger: Answering the wrong question the right way.
Rogers, Todd; Norton, Michael I.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, Vol 17(2), Jun 2011, 139-147. doi: 10.1037/a0023439
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xap/17/2/139/
Article in Science Daily about the research:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110505111945.htm
