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74 Deception at Work

SADNESS AND DEPRESSION

Depression can be regarded as anger directed inwards and is often an isolation from reality. It
usually has the same roots as anger and leads to increased, rather than reduced, anxiety and
can result in a mental block. However, depression is often an unconscious excuse in anticipa-
tion of failure. Signs of depression include:

• complaints about poor health and particularly mental problems;
• self-pity;
• paranoia;
• comments such as ‘I wish I had never been born’;
• self-deprecation, e.g. ‘No one will ever believe me’, ‘I am not clever enough to lie’.

It is also not uncommon for suspects to feign depression to get the interviewer to pull back,
using phrases such as ‘If this doesn’t stop, I will kill myself’. Depressed people do not usually
confess and the ways in which a subject can, and should, be talked out of this negative emo-
tion are explained in Chapter 7, page [xref].

Other characteristics of deception

A COMPLEX ARRAY

There is also a range of other emotional and emotionally based reactions that can surface
during an interview.

SELF-DENIAL

The human body has a powerful ability to anaesthetize itself against pain, and the mind has
an equivalent capacity to block out unpleasant facts from consciousness. This self-denial may
take a number of forms, both conscious and unconscious (see Table 3.9).

Table 3.9 Examples of self-deception

Category Effect Examples and comments

Repression Keeping bad news from the Like the ostrich: burying his head in the sand
Denial consciousness

Deliberate refusal to accept things as Pure self-deception and a most common

they are feature in lies

Projection Refusal to see himself as being Seeing the problem in an impersonal way.
Obsession personally involved For example, Richard Nixon often referred to
himself in the third person as ‘The President’
Displacing anxiety to a manual task
Compulsive washing of hands etc.

Isolation Acceptance of the facts while not Admitting the transgression but without
accepting blame, guilt or emotion intention or guilty knowledge

Rationalization Consciously defending, justifying or Minimizing the seriousness of the problem
downplaying the bad news