Abstract

Statement consistency is critical when determining a suspect’s statement’s veracity. Low statement consistency of a suspect affects the perception that the statement is a lie. However, few studies have compared the effects of the four types of statement consistency (repetition, contradiction, omission, and reminiscence) on the perception of statement consistency and veracity. Perception of statement consistency also varies depending on the relevance of the inconsistent details. Therefore, veracity judgment and perception of statement consistency with differentiating components of statement consistency and detail relevance. A total of 192 participants were randomly assigned to a 3 (statement consistency type: contradiction vs. omission vs. reminiscence) × 2 (information relevance: central vs. peripheral) between-subjects design, along with a control group (repetition). Participants read repeated suspect’s interview transcripts corresponding to each condition and evaluated the suspect’s statement consistency and veracity. The results showed that participants who read transcripts containing contradiction details evaluated the statements as less consistent and were more likely to judge them as deceptive than other conditions. These results suggest that participants perceive statement consistency differently depending on the type of inconsistency. The implications of these findings and directions for future research are also discussed.