Using the Verifiability lie Detection Approach in an Insurance Claim Setting

Student’s Name:
Instructor’s Name:
Course:
Date:
Using the verifiability lie detection approach in an insurance claim setting
Most of the research conducted on forensic deception has focused on police-suspect interviews. Areas such as intelligence interviews and financial settings have been ignored. Vrij, Nahari, Isitt, and Leal (2016) highlight the need to conduct more research on forensic deception in financial settings, specifically in an insurance claim setting. Deception in insurance claims costs the insurance sector over a billion pounds each year.
Previous studies have suggested the use of verifiability approach in lie detection (Vrij et al., p.184). The verifiability approach is based on two key assumptions. First, according to the approach, truth tellers include more details in their accounts compared to liars. It is easier to believe accounts that are very detailed compared to shallow accounts. This influences liars to include many details in their accounts so that they are easily available. However, liars also want to provide very few details such that they are careful that the details they provide cannot be checked out. This is the second assumption of verifiability approach. To avoid being caught and at the same time to appear believable, liars provide details that cannot be verified. The verifiability approach has already been applied in police-suspect interviews.
The applicability of the verifiability approach in insurance settings will differ from its application in police settings.

For police settings, the police officer is aware of when a crime occurred. In police-suspect interviews, the suspect would tell the officer where he/she was at the time of the crime. The officer can verify the information through an alibi. This is difficult in an insurance setting. It is easier for a liar to pick an event that in most cases is true, then add up a lie about the insurance event. This becomes difficult for the insurance company to verify. Generally, in police settings, the aim is to prove that the suspect was not at a certain place at a certain time while in insurance settings, the aim is to prove that the incident actually happened and there are witnesses. Vrij et al. aim to evaluate whether the verifiability approach can be used in the financial setting, specifically in an insurance claim setting.
Work cited
Vrij, Aldert et al. “Using the Verifiability Lie Detection Approach in An Insurance Claim Setting.” Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, vol 13, no. 3, 2016, pp. 183-197. Wiley, doi:10.1002/jip.1458.