During military land operations, Face-To-Face communication with key-actors is a commonly used tool. The obtained information is used as input for future operations. Evaluation of the truthfulness and credibility of this, often valuable,
information is therefore important.
The composition of socalled Engagement Teams is mostly more rank than skills based. During After Action Reviews, e.g. during the Dutch operations in Uruzgan (2006-2010) and Mali (2014-2019) it was noted that these engagements were not always effective, generally due to lack of skills.
The purpose of this research study is to investigate if the onscene commander can optimise the composition of the Engagement Teams, by adding a person with more accurate deception detection skills than average. Literature review suggests that younger and also left-handed people are more accurate in detecting deception. Besides these variables, also the impact of rank and mission experience is investigated. I was not able to find any literature on these variables, related to this topic. The data was obtained by a test and a questionnaire.
The test consists of 6 clips, showing people lying or telling the truth during a (fake) job interview. The sample (N=152) is randomly chosen within the Dutch Armed Forces, with ages between 18 and 62 years, left and right-handed, with no mission experience till a lot of mission experience, and ranks between private and colonel. The data is analysed with SPSS (ANOVA) and two additional non-parametric tests (Kruskal-Wallis H-test and Mann-Whitney U-test).
Results suggests that age, handedness, and mission experience have an effect on the ability of deception detection. Also, rank does not seem to have a correlation with the ability of deception detection.