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CHAPTER 39
Deception Induced Confession:
Strategies of Police Interrogators
and Their Lay Collaborators
Tyler N. Livingston, Peter O. Rerick,
J. Guillermo Villalobos and Deborah Davis
Aspiring to become the master interrogator of his generation, a new US law
enforcement officer walks into the office of the reigning master interrogator
of his day to ask his advice. The master interrogator tells him:
Son, you’re trying to convince your targets to do something that they firmly
believe will have terrible consequences for them, and maybe their whole group
or country. They have really good reasons to believe this. And indeed, if they
confess or provide intelligence, it will actually be terrible for them and others
they might be protecting. They aren’t going to start out liking you or trusting
you. They’ll assume you’re the enemy and that you just want to hurt them. All
their suspicions are right. They should fear and distrust you, and they shouldn’t
follow any of your advice. So, how do you get past that? Well, you’re going to
© The Author(s) 2019
T. Docan-Morgan (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Deceptive
Communication, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96334-1_39
T. N. Livingston · P. O. Rerick · J. G. Villalobos · D. Davis (*)
University of Nevada, Reno, NV, USA
e-mail: debdavis@unr.edu
T. N. Livingston
e-mail: livingston@nevada.unr.edu
P. O. Rerick
e-mail: prerick@nevada.unr.edu
J. G. Villalobos
e-mail: jvillalobos@unr.edu