Did Somebody See It? Applying the Verifiability Approach to Insurance Claim Interviews

Nahari, Galit and Leal, Sharon and Vrij, Aldert and Warmelink, Lara and Vernham, Zarah (2014) Did Somebody See It? Applying the Verifiability Approach to Insurance Claim Interviews. Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, 11 (3). pp. 237-243. ISSN 1544-4759

Abstract

We examined the application of the verifiability approach to insurance claim interviews. The verifiability approach states that truth tellers and liars differ from each other in terms of the number of details they give that can be verified. Eighty-three true and false insurance claim statements, related to damage, theft, or loss, were coded in terms of witnesses' (was the incident witnessed by others) and verifiability' (the number of perceptual and contextual details provided that could be checked by the investigator). We found that the majority of liars, compared with half the truth tellers, described unwitnessed incidents. This difference between the groups allowed for the detection of liars only. Discrimination between liars and truth tellers based on the verifiability of details was not possible. The implications of these findings are discussed. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.