Discriminating between True and False Intentions

Background & Context

Discriminating between true and false intentions represents a relatively new frontier in deception detection research, focusing on future events rather than past actions that dominated the field for half a century. This research holds profound practical value for preventing future crimes, including detecting when individuals lie about planning terrorist attacks.

While the ability to distinguish between true intentions (future actions a person genuinely intends to perform) and false intentions (claimed future actions not intended to be carried out) holds great value for law enforcement and security professionals, this topic has been largely ignored by researchers. Traditional deception detection methods were developed for evaluating statements about past events, requiring novel theoretical and methodological approaches for assessing future-oriented deception.

Previous research uncovered differences between truth tellers' and liars' statements of intent, as well as possibilities to magnify these differences using active detection strategies such as specialized interviewing techniques. However, the field lacked a stringent theoretical foundation to guide research and practice.

Research Design & Methodology

This chapter provides a comprehensive review of extant research on true and false intentions, presenting both traditional deception detection techniques extended to the field of intent—including physiological measures like the concealed information test and thermal imaging approaches—and strategic interviewing methods such as the strategic use of evidence and unanticipated questions.

The review also covers intention-specific approaches that draw on basic psychological research on goals, planning, and episodic future thought to devise novel detection tools. The chapter synthesizes findings from multiple experimental paradigms:

• Physiological measures: Applications of established lie detection technologies to intention contexts
• Implicit measures: Assessing automatic cognitive responses to goal-related cues
• Strategic interviewing: Techniques designed to elicit differential cues from truth tellers and liars
• Episodic future thought (EFT): Examining mental imagery and planning processes

The chapter provides theoretical grounding specific for intention research and relates experimental findings to applied contexts.

Results & Key Findings

Research revealed that true statements of intent contained more detail than false statements, and statements of true intentions referred more to 'how' actions would be followed through, whereas statements of false intentions referred more to 'why' the action was to be performed.

Key empirical findings synthesized in the chapter include:

• Truth tellers' answers to unanticipated questions about planning phases were significantly more detailed than liars', with the Cognitive Interview magnifying these differences
• Truth tellers' descriptions of intentions were more characterized by information related to how to attain stated goals
• True intentions activate behavioral goals through genuine commitment to perform stated actions, while false intentions lack this commitment and goal activation
• Liars tend to prepare ready-made answers to anticipated questions to convince interviewers why stated goals are necessary

Studies examining markers of good planning behavior as cues for separating true and false intent found that statements of true intent showed greater evidence of concrete planning.

Discussion & Significance

Despite promising empirical results demonstrating differences between true and false intentions, the literature remained theoretically underdeveloped at the time of this chapter's publication. The chapter represented an important step toward focusing on mental representations of future tasks from which statements of intent are produced, addressing whether such representations differ systematically and could provide novel cues to deception.

The chapter's synthesis highlighted the importance of understanding cognitive differences between recalling past actions and explaining future intentions. Recalling past actions involves retrieving stored episodic memories, whereas explaining future intentions relies on "mental time travel" through episodic future thinking—the ability to mentally pre-experience personal events that may happen in the future.

The intention-specific approaches reviewed in the chapter availed themselves of basic psychological research on intention-related topics including goals, planning, and episodic future thought to devise novel detection tools. This interdisciplinary approach represented a significant advancement over atheoretical approaches to deception detection.

Limitations & Considerations

Previous studies had been loosely anchored in related fields such as planning, mental imagery, and implementation intentions, necessitating more systematic theoretical development. The chapter acknowledged that most findings came from laboratory studies with mock crime scenarios, raising questions about generalizability to real-world high-stakes situations.

The review also noted methodological challenges inherent in intention research. Unlike past-event deception where ground truth can be verified, assessing genuine intentions requires accepting participants' commitment to planned actions. Additionally, the ecological validity of asking participants to form false intentions in laboratory settings may not fully capture the psychological processes of real deceptive intent in criminal or security contexts.

Practical Applications

The chapter provides actionable guidance for practitioners conducting investigative interviews. Strategic interviewing methods including the strategic use of evidence and unanticipated questions showed particular promise for eliciting differential cues from truth tellers and liars about their intentions.

For security screening and investigative contexts, the research suggests focusing interviews on the planning phase and implementation details ("how" questions) rather than justifications ("why" questions). Understanding that true intentions activate behavioral goals while false intentions do not provides interviewers with a theoretical framework for developing questioning strategies that exploit these cognitive differences. The chapter's integration of theory and practice offers investigators evidence-based alternatives to unreliable behavioral cue detection, potentially improving their ability to prevent future crimes through more effective assessment of stated intentions.