Provocations in Lie Detection: Poison or Cure?

Provocations play a significant role in marketing, politics, art, military affairs, and relationships between individuals, legal entities, and even states. But that’s not all—provocateurs surround us in everyday life, using both overt and covert provocations. Obvious provocations include direct insults, humiliation, questioning your abilities, or even your gender—like, “Are you a real man or what?” Covert provocations often take the form of manipulation, where someone tries to extract information from you or push you toward certain actions. Some do this intentionally, while others are simply used to communicating destructively.

However, this article isn’t about the destructiveness of provocations in communication or how to protect yourself from provocateurs. We can discuss that another time. Here, we’ll focus on the importance and ethical use of provocations in the work of a verifier-profiler.

What Is a Provocation?

The word “provocation” literally translates from Latin as “challenge.” In communication, a provocation is an action or series of actions intended to elicit a response, inaction, or emotion from the person being provoked—a kind of incitement to certain behavior. Provocation is a highly effective method of psychological influence and is often used by provocateurs to achieve their goals. It can trigger impulsive, spontaneous reactions, causing someone to make mistakes under pressure or emotional stress.

Provocations in Lie Detection

Provocations aren’t limited to the fields mentioned above. In the work of a profiler-verifier, there are specific rules and principles—called presuppositions—that make the job easier. Presuppositions are principles, assumptions, or axiomatic beliefs that give communication meaning and help achieve desired results. In lie detection, these thinking paradigms are crucial.

One presupposition states: “The verifier is not ethical, and that’s their ethics.” During their work, verifiers often act in ways that may seem unethical or inhumane to outside observers. But this apparent lack of ethics is tied to the ethical goal the verifier pursues. Think of Cal Lightman from the TV series “Lie to Me.” If you analyze his behavior, you’ll notice he rarely does anything pleasant for the interviewee. However, his goal is always aligned with the interests of innocent parties.

Before declaring someone uninvolved, the verifier must perform a series of actions and, frankly, manipulations. Take the verifier’s main tool—their questions. They use control and test questions. Skillful selection of these questions helps determine a person’s involvement. The process itself is far from pleasant, but without these methods, it’s hard to help an innocent person. That’s why another presupposition exists: “Lie detection is based on provocation.” No more, no less. Verifiers provoke, bluff, and ask many uncomfortable questions. Often, even the polygraph or lie detector itself is a tool of provocation.

Provocation as a Tool

A provocation can be seen as a well-thought-out and targeted irritant that evokes specific emotions and pushes people to actions they wouldn’t take without external stimulus. In profiling, provocations can be verbal or nonverbal. For example, nonverbal provocations include giving positive or negative feedback. The idea is that people don’t always consciously process your feedback. Automatically and unconsciously, we assess nonverbal behavior during communication. When a guilty or unmotivated innocent person receives negative feedback—like a look of contempt, head shaking, or a poker face—they may try to change their behavior to elicit positive feedback (nods, interest, or association), or they may become flustered, lose track of their story, fall silent, and start giving more truthful information. Of course, nonverbal provocation is used alongside verbal provocation.

An example of verbal provocation is a provocative question or statement. Such questions contain a contradictory, unfounded, or obviously false assumption, making it hard to answer directly with “yes” or “no.” These are often used as rhetorical tools to stump the interviewee or force them to confirm or deny a hidden (possibly false) assertion. Examples include: “Are you still afraid to tell me what happened?”, “So, you’ve already sold the missing property?”, “You haven’t worked for a long time because you were in prison, right?”, “Did you know we found evidence pointing to you?”, “Have you already scared the witnesses so they won’t turn you in?” The goal is to provoke a reaction, emotion, or to shake someone out of their confidence or unwillingness to cooperate. These questions aren’t used to interpret the reactions of the guilty or innocent, but sometimes they work as a bluff, which also helps the verifier.

As a provocative statement, the “believe/don’t believe” technique is used. Here, the profiler states their opinion about what they’ve heard and observes the interviewee’s reaction. The emotions of the guilty and innocent will differ, providing additional confirmation for the verifier’s conclusions.

Other Provocative Techniques

Some provocative techniques are borrowed from Frank Farrelly, the founder of provocative therapy. In his book “Provocative Therapy,” he describes 39 behavioral, strategic, and mental patterns he used with clients. Here are some other provocative techniques that verifiers, investigators, and other professionals may use when checking the reliability of information:

• Physical contact
• Stories, jokes, metaphors
• Negative remarks about absent participants
• Exaggerating the investigator’s knowledge
• Moral arguments, appealing to the suspect’s conscience
• Interrupting
• Mocking or mimicking
• Misinterpreting someone’s behavior
• Describing strong nonverbal reactions
• Shifting blame between the interviewee and circumstances
• Challenging the person’s courage
• Provoking conflict
• Tactless personal questions
• Deliberate misunderstanding
• Threats, and more

This list is not exhaustive. There are also provocative schizophrenogenic patterns in the specialist’s toolkit, though they are used rarely. The goal of such patterns is to prepare the interviewee for conversation or to overcome resistance.

A professional verifier does not use provocations for entertainment or to take out their bad mood on someone. They use provocations only as a remedy, not as poison. As the saying goes, “Poison can kill, but poison can also save.” Paracelsus once said that everything is poison, and nothing is without toxicity; only the dose makes the poison invisible. Poisons in therapeutic doses heal, but an excess of medicine can kill (think of a filling with arsenic). Yes, the work of verifiers may not always seem humane, but remember—their goals are nobler than the methods they use.