The ‘Margaret Thatcher Effect’ as it was first done with an image of her. Processing faces can sometimes be difficult.
With the advent of computer systems, there is an opportunity to create an ever more sophisticated method of reconstructing faces to aid the police (Bruce, Frowd, and Hancock). However, such devices while impressive in their ability to create something that looks like someone they still depend upon the reliability of the minds cognitive processes to accurately recall uniqueinformation about the features of the face, was that a Roman nose, were they olive shaped eyes? Research suggests humans have a natural inclination to process and recognise faces above all other information from an evolutionary perspective this makes a lot of sense. However reconstructing from recallthose faces does not come as easily. Factors such as ‘Weapon Focus’ (Loftus, 87) and post witness identification influences such as confirming feedback (Wells and Bradfield 1998) call into question the accuracy of any eye-witness testimony. Pawan Sinha published an influential article on key factors that impact upon the accuracy of facial reconstruction read it here. Try a facial recognition test here.
The variability of someone’s ability to accurately recalla face can be seen evidently below…..
Believe it or not the above image contributed to the perpetrator being caught…
The difficulty of constructing faces from our memory has been known for over 30 years (e.g. Davies, 1978). We are not good at the tasks required – describing and selecting individual facial features – instead we process faces ‘holistically’, more as a complete entity (e.g. Young et al., 1987). For example, the perception of facial features changes in the presence of other features (e.g. Tanaka & Farah, 1993), and so the features and their position on the face are both important. Modern facial composite systems, where witnesses choose individual features in the context of a complete face, apply this idea to some extent.
The use of ‘Holistic’ based software such as EvoFit allows factors such as trustworthiness or aggressiveness can be added in the face as Sinha identifies recall of faces tend to be greater when we have associated an emotional component to them.
Watch below how the Police are using ‘EvoFit’ recognition, of faces rather than actively trying to recall features in their work with witnesses.
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Frowd& Bruce also conducted some different research attempting to investigate the importance of internal and external features when recreating faces. Do we have cognitively process internal and external features differently based upon our familiarityof the individual or is there a difference in accuracy just because internal features are more difficult to replicate? –Read the study here.
A tale of two approaches: Top Down(US) and Bottom Up (UK).
Offender profiling attempts to describe a tool that aims to narrow the scope of a criminal investigation. This is broken down into 3 key aims (Holmes and Holmes 2002);
1) Identify characteristics of the suspect.
2) Create an evaluation of their belongings.
3) Bespoke interview strategies.
Boon and Davies (1992) coined the labels ‘top down‘ and ‘bottom up‘ approaches to offender profiling. The aim was to distinguish between those that take a more evidenced based profiles using strong data collection strategies to build a picture of the crime from the bottom up as opposed to the notion of a more intuitive application of prior knowledge and experience that is then applied from the top down to the scene. The ‘Top Down’ approach is often cited as being more akin to The U.S -F.B.I methodology and the ‘Bottom Up’ applied to the more distinctive British approach which is often used to describe David Canter’s Investigative Psychology.
However, it could be stated that British profilers such a ‘Jigsaw man‘ Paul Britton could be classed as ‘top down’ due to the profiles he generated from his experience as a Clinical Psychologist and therefore the geographical labels are only as a guide.
The historical roots of the Top Down American Approach
This is the most plausible outcome. Not only has he frequently threatened to commit suicide, but from what we know of his psychology it is the most likely possibility. It is probably true that he has an inordinate fear of death, but being an hysteric he could undoubtedly screw himself up into the super-man character and perform the deed. In all probability, however, it would not be a simple suicide. He has too much of the dramatic for that and since immortality is one of his dominant motives we can imagine that he would stage the most dramatic and effective death scene he could possibly think of. He knows how to bind the people to him and if he cannot have the bond in life he will certainly do his utmost to achieve it in death. He might even engage some other fanatic to do the final killing at his orders. Hitler has already envisaged a death of this kind, for he has said to Rauschning: “Yes, in the hour of supreme peril I must sacrifice myself for the people.” This would be extremely undesirable from our point of view because if it is cleverly done it would establish the Hitler legend so firmly in the minds of the German people that it might take generations to eradicate it.
source: http://www.iiit.ac.in
James A Brussel and the case of The ‘Mad’ Bomber
However, the work of James A. Brussel is often cited as being the first meaningful ‘Profile’ of the modern era. After a sustained series of bombings between 1940 and 1956 in New York placed in deliberately very public spaces the Police exasperated turned to local psychologist, Brussel. The profile stated the suspect was most likely middle aged, overweight, and probably not married. It was possible that he lived with a relative, maybe a brother or sister. The offender probably had skills in engineering or mechanics, and may have come from Connecticut or surrounding areas. According to Brussel, he noted that the bomber had a particular grudge against Consolidated Edison, which was New York’s main power company at the time.
“He goes out of his way to seem perfectly proper, a regular man. He may attend church regularly. He wears no ornament, no jewelry, no flashy ties or clothes. He is quiet, polite, methodical, prompt… Education: at least two years of high school. The letters seem to show that. They also suggest that he’s foreign-born or living in some community of the foreign-born…He is a Slav… One more thing,” I said, my eyes closed tight. “When you catch him—and I have no doubt you will—he’ll be wearing a double-breasted suit….And it will be buttoned,” I said. (Brussel, 1968)
All of this information led police to George Metesky, who was a former employee of Con Ed. In 1957, Metesky was arrested, and surprisingly confessed at once to the bombings. Ironically, Dr. Brussel noted that the bomber would be dressed nicely and neatly. When George Metesky was arrested, he changed into a neat, clean, double-breasted suit from his pyjamas, which he dutifully buttoned.
The 1970’s -onwards
In the 1970’s a melting pot of specialists in serial crimes became the catalyst for how profiling is shaped today. The Federal Bureau of Investigation started to develop its own profiling techniques, Howard Teten and Patrick Mullany were key members of the newly formed Behavioural Science Unit. In addition to this Robert Keppel and Richard Walter published a manual called ‘Profiling Killers’ partly based upon their wide experiences of working within Michigan prisons. Ressler, Burgess and Douglas started to develop the idea of a typology of serial offenders.
Watch the following video clip that discusses the start of profiling in the 1970’s with an interview withserial killer; John Wayne Gacy.
After interviewing 36 of America’s most dangerous serious offenders, they identified key characteristics that would allow law enforcement agencies to ‘read’ a crime scene that correlated with a type of individual and their stereotypical behaviours summarised below into the organized and disorganized typologies.
Watch the video clip that summarises all approaches of profiling with a focus on the Top Down typologies.
Howitt (2009) identified a key 4 stage process to the approach;
This classification stage of analysis is, however, considered unnecessary by those who: (a) advocate inductive (or non-FBI) methods; or (b) find that there is no empirical validity or reliabilityfrom classification. Godwin (1998) and Canter et al. (2004) are representative of those who consider classification along FBI lines to be invalid. Nonetheless, the FBI method of classifying the basic “type” of the offender early on has existed since 1974 for good reason. Douglas, Ressler, Burgess & Hartman (1986) recount successful use of the method, best explained in Ressler, Burgess & Douglas (1992), as having value for narrowing down, early on in investigation, a possible list of suspects quickly sorted by psychological “indicators,” much like the DSM-IV checklists used in counseling psychology (Douglas, Burgess & Ressler 1997). The FBI method involves classifying offenders very narrowly by whether they are “disorganized” or “organized,” and not only is there debate over whether these terms have any utility, there is debate over whether these two categories are a typology, a dichotomy, or a continuum (Turvey 1999). Essentially, they are substitute terms for psychotic (disorganized) and psychopathic (organized); i.e., watered-down psychiatric terms for the benefit of law enforcement training. Most of all, they are generalizations, not conclusions. An offender, so categorized, only “tends to” have the characteristics associated with their type. No magical capture of the offender is expected from use of this typology.
Case Study -The Washington Sniper
Watch the following video clip using the infamous ‘Washington Sniper‘ case and consider how the experience of the individual profiler can produce contradictory perspectives creating an obstacle rather than a useful tool for law enforcement agents.
Profiling today.
There has been much criticism of the F.B.I approach on a number of fronts in terms of its reliability as being fit for purpose. As it tends to be used for serial cases which are high profile its successes and failures are often well documented, warts and all. In addition many academic evaluations have been performed on the accuracy of the typology with existing, retrospective data arguably the most damning is that of David Canter’s paper of 2004 which statistically analysed solved cases and how they correlated with the typologies. Only two of the characteristics provided any correlation.
I have read the terms and conditions. Surely the single greatest lie ever told, certainly in terms of the volume of us who have ticked that box knowing that really we haven’t. However, deception breeds deception and with now defunct computer game shop Gamestationtaking advantage of the aforementioned ‘fib’ by fiendishly incorporating into the smallprint of their online terms and conditions- that they owned the very soul of anyone whom blindly ticked the box -‘the immortal soul clause’ as it was called. Over 7.500 people were caught out on April 1st 2010- they were refunded their soul in an email.
However lying, deception, untruthful, false, dishonest, mendacious, perfidious, duplicitous, dissimulating, dissembling and double Janus-facedness is a normal human behaviour, not just human, animals deceive too. Koko the Gorilla had been taught sign language and ruthlessly blamed the ripping out of a sink from a wall on her pet kitten (Koko signed on the return of her keepers…..”The cat did it!”). If we are to take an evolutionary view it is a survival mechanism, a simple smile to someone you despise or you feel threatened by is a useful tactic to hide any weaknesses that may be exploited by them and hide, deceive them of your true feelings. However false smiles can be detected if you know where to look – the muscles that generate a warm and honest smile are different to those that are created when creating a false smile. It’s all in the eyes…you see.
Those lying eyes
The eyes truly are the window to the soul. However don’t be fooled by so called Neuro Linguistic Programming techniques (a good example of pseudoscience) that if someone is looking up when telling you something then they are lying there is little evidence to support this but is something that your hear still being pedled around every now and then.
And there lies the crux of the matter…are there any reliable physical cues to deception? Maybe a more fundamental question is are there any universal responses of facial expression or body language? (The eyebrow flash for recognition of someone is thought to be pretty universal as an involuntary response.) Certainly classic research by Ekman into facial expression has suggested that there are a handful of truly universal expressions. However deceivingly there is a long tradition of supposed cues to deception or ‘tells’ as gamblers would say little unconscious signs of anxiety, uncertainty due to knowingly attempting to convince someone of something you know not to be true. Going red, not being able to look someone in the eye, looking at someone for too long in the eye, rubbing the back of the neck, rubbing the ear lobes, scratching the nose, excessive blinking (note that psychopaths reportedly blink less and maybe that is why they are better at deceiving people) are all ways many think they can spot a liar – but where does the truth lie?
Bad Lie detectors
Many of these are signs of anxiety not necessarily deception, however Polygraphs (aka lie detectors) have been used for many years in criminal investigations in the United States (and on the Jeremy Kyle show) and provided as evidence, however it measures variations in physiological arousal (not lying) and therefore fundamentally flawed, the American Psychological Association concluded:
The development of currently used “lie detection” technologies has been based on ideas about physiological functioning but has, for the most part, been independent of systematic psychological research. Early theorists believed that deception required effort and, thus, could be assessed by monitoring physiological changes. But such propositions have not been proven and basic research remains limited on the nature of deceptiveness. Efforts to develop actual tests have always outpaced theory-based basic research. Without a better theoretical understanding of the mechanisms by which deception functions, however, development of a lie detection technology seems highly problematic.
For now, although the idea of a lie detector may be comforting, the most practical advice is to remain skeptical about any conclusion wrung from a polygraph. Cited; http://www.apa.org/research/action/polygraph.aspx
F.B.I training focusses upon a range of techniques for detection .
Good lie detectors
Where humans on average can detect lies at marginally above chance level – 54% but surely professionals such as Police officers are better? When Samantha Mann conducted research into a new area of lie detection and found some interesting results, there seemed to be a greater emphasis on story cues rather than the historic notion body language cues of the more experienced and stronger lie detectors used in the research. Detecting true lies; Police officers abilities to detect true lies. Mann and Vrij’s research supports the view that often the focus on lie detection is in behavioural cues rather than the more accurate experienced police officers who also rely on story cues as a method of detection.
Here is an overview of an alternative piece of research conducted by Mann and Vrij investigating high stake liars.
Professor David Canter and colleague Dr John Synnott may be about to turn the whole area on its head with current research taking place at the Centre for Investigative Psychology on revisiting the use of polygraph techniques in the UK.
The BBC recently compiled a practical overview of lie detection – View it here.
The fun of deception
However, the detection of lies can be fun……………..in a light entertainment kind of way. The story cues on the clip below may seem so far fetched that it must be a lie…it must be………..mustn’t it?
ore sophisticated method of reconstructing faces to aid the police (Bruce, Frowd, and Hancock). However, such devices while impressive in their ability to create something that looks like someone they still depend upon the reliability of the minds cognitive processes to accurately recall unique information about the features of the face, was that a Roman nose, were they olive shaped eyes? Research suggests humans have a natural inclination to process and recognise faces above all other information from an evolutionary perspective this makes a lot of sense. However reconstructing from recall those faces does not come as easily. Factors such as ‘Weapon Focus’ (Loftus, 87) and post witness identification influences such as confirming feedback (Wells and Bradfield 1998) call into question the accuracy of any eye-witness testimony. Pawan Sinha published an influential article on key factors that impact upon the accuracy of facial reconstruction read it here. Try a facial recognition test here.
exasperated turned to local psychologist, Brussel. The profile stated the suspect was most likely middle aged, overweight, and probably not married. It was possible that he lived with a relative, maybe a brother or sister. The offender probably had skills in engineering or mechanics, and may have come from Connecticut or surrounding areas. According to Brussel, he noted that the bomber had a particular grudge against Consolidated Edison, which was New York’s main power company at the time.
The eyes truly are the window to the soul. However don’t be fooled by so called
n? Maybe a more fundamental question is are there any universal responses of facial expression or body language? (The eyebrow flash for recognition of someone is thought to be pretty universal as an involuntary response.) Certainly classic research by 
Psychlite 