Publication Date
3-31-2025
Document Type
Article
English Abstract
Can a written instruction convince refugee status decision-makers not to rely on a claimant’s ‘appearance, presentation, and demeanour’ in judging the claimant’s credibility? How else might such an instruction affect the decision-makers’ deception judgments? This study explored the effects of an APD instruction on the judgments of lay decision-makers making credibility judgments in a simulated refugee hearing (n=275). It sought, by means of an experiment, to quantify the instruction’s effects both on decision- making outcomes and on the written reasons that the decision-makers offered to justify their conclusions. The APD instruction in our study had no significant effect on whether participants judged the claimant to be credible or deceptive, how confidently they reached either kind of conclusion, or how thoroughly they justified their reasoning. Those who received the instruction, however, cited APD factors significantly less often in supporting their judgments. Under this study’s simplified experimental conditions, the APD instruction may have caused decision-makers, consciously or otherwise, to suppress the fact that APD factors had influenced their thinking, driving these factors underground. In real life, this kind of suppression would have serious consequences for the rule of law, as it would immunize flawed reasoning from appeal or review. This study’s findings, which have implications for credibility assessment in other legal settings, call into question the received wisdom that written instructions are an effective way to dissuade decision-makers from relying on unsound deception inferences.
Citation Information
Evans Cameron, Hilary; Rehaag, Sean; and Friesen, Katrina.
"The Effect of an ‘Appearance, Presentation and Demeanour’ Instruction on Credibility and Deception Judgments in Mock Refugee Status Decisions."
Journal of Law and Social Policy
37.
(2025): 93-129.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.60082/0829-3929.1492
https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/jlsp/vol37/iss1/6
References
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10 Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Assessment of Credibility in Claims for Refugee Protection (Ottawa: 2020) at 2.2.7, online: www.irb-cisr.gc.ca/en/legal-policy/legal-concepts/Pages/Credib.aspx [perma.cc/BM6A- VCNG].
11 Australian Administrative Appeals Tribunal, Migration and Refugee Division, Guidelines on the Assessment of Credibility (Australia: 2015), at 1.33 www.refworld.org/policy/legalguidance/natlegbod/2012/en/102034 [perma.cc/7Z35-6KQ6].
12 International Association of Refugee Law Judges, A Structured Approach to the Decision Making Process in Refugee and other International Protection Claims, (Haarlem: 2017), online: www.iarmj.org/en/homepage/latest- news/432-publication-iarlj-guidance-paper-and-chart [perma.cc/A4NL-KPGF].
13 UK Home Office, Asylum Policy Instruction: Assessing Credibility and Refugee Status, Version 9.0, (2015) www.refworld.org/pdfid/54e487b14.pdf [perma.cc/ZV2E-P8J7]. Of note, the text in the most recent version of this document qualifies this statement: "A claimant's general demeanour must not be used to assess credibility" [emphasis added]. UK Home Office, Assessing Credibility and Refugee Status in Asylum Claims Lodged on or after 28 June 2022, Version 13.0, (2023) www.gov.uk/government/publications/considering-asylum-claims-and-assessing-credibility-instruction [perma.cc/7L7J-GSCP].
14 Beyond Proof, supra note 9, at 190.
15 The decision to explore deception findings specifically is grounded in normative legal theory. See discussion in Evans Cameron, Sin of Omission, supra note 1 at 131: "Simply put, for reasons arising out of its obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees ('Convention'), a refugee status determination system ought to be more concerned with avoiding mistaken rejections than with avoiding mistaken grants. Moreover, the Canadian Federal Court of Appeal has established that it is a worse mistake to disbelieve a truthful claimant than to believe a liar. There is therefore both a legal and an ethical obligation to submit the refugee system's rejection mechanisms to careful scrutiny" [references omitted]. See also generally Hilary Evans Cameron, Refugee Law's Fact-Finding Crisis: Truth, Risk, and the Wrong Mistake (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
16 Rehaag & Evans Cameron, supra note 2.
17 Participation in this study was anonymous and voluntary. Students not wishing to participate could choose to complete an equivalent written assignment instead, in keeping with norms established for social psychology research. American Psychological Association, Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, (Washington: APA, 2017) s 8.04(b), online: www.apa.org/ethics/code/ethics-code-2017.pdf [perma.cc/HUQ5-Q998]. Of the 283 students enrolled in the course, one chose to write the alternate assignment; five began the survey but did not complete it; one finished survey but gave no written reasons; and one withdrew their data.
18 See e.g. Rogers et al, supra note 2 at 148.
19 See sources in supra note 4.
20 See sources in supra notes 3, 5, 6, 7 and 8.
21 UK Home Office, supra note 13 at 18.
22 Chantelle M Baguley, Blake M McKimmie & Barbara M Masser, "Deconstructing the Simplification of Jury Instructions: How Simplifying the Features of Complexity Affects Jurors' Application of Instructions" (2017) 41:3 Law and Human Behavior 284. https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000234
23 David Alan Sklansky, "Evidentiary Instructions and the Jury as Other" (2013) 65:3 Stan L Rev 407.
24 Joel D Lieberman, "The Psychology of the Jury instruction Process" in Joel D Lieberman & Daniel A Krauss, eds, Jury Psychology: Social Aspects of Trial Processes: Psychology in the Courtroom, 1st ed (Routledge, 2009) 129; Baguley, McKimmie & Masser, supra note 22; Olga Boginskaya, "The Simplification of Jury Instructions: Legal-Lay Interactions in Jury Trials" (2020) 8:2 ESP Today 297; Robert P Charrow & Veda R Charrow, "Making Legal Language Understandable: A Psycholinguistic Study of Jury Instructions" (1979) 79:7 Colum L Rev 1306; Joel D Lieberman & Bruce D Sales, "What Social Science Teaches Us About the Jury Instruction Process" (1997) 3:4 Psychol Pub Pol'y & L 589; Walter W Steele Jr & Elizabeth G Thornburg, "Jury Instructions: A Persistent Failure to Communicate" (1988) 67:1 NCL Rev 77; Amiram Elwork, James J Alfini & Bruce D Sales, "Toward Understandable Jury Instructions" (1982) 65:8 Judicature 432.
25 Charrow & Charrow, supra note 24.
26 Scholars have raised the concern, for example, that asking jurors in a sexual assault trial to consider whether the accused "applied force to" rather than "touched" the complainant may lead to false acquittals. Paul M Alexander & Kelly de Luca, "The Mens Rea of Sexual Assault: How Jury Instructions Are Getting It Wrong" (2019) 42:3 Man LJ 39 at 43. Similarly, scholars have suggested that jurors assessing negligence in the context of a motor vehicle collision may come to different conclusions depending on whether they are instructed to consider whether one car "bumped" or "smashed" into the other. Phoebe C Ellsworth & Alan Reifman, "Juror Comprehension and Public Policy: Perceived Problems and Proposed Solutions" (2000) 6:3 Psychol Pub Pol'y & L 788 at 815-816.
27 Baguley, McKimmie & Masser, supra note 22; John Sweller & Paul Chandler, "Why Some Material Is Difficult to Learn" (1994) 12:3 Cognition and Instruction 185. https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532690xci1203_1
28 Ibid; Boginskaya, supra note 24.
29 Carolyn Semmler & Neil Brewer, "Using a Flow-chart to Improve Comprehension of Jury Instructions" (2002) 9:2 Psychiatry, Psychology and Law 262. https://doi.org/10.1375/pplt.2002.9.2.262
30 Boginskaya, supra note 24.
31 Charrow & Charrow, supra note 24.
32 Ibid.
33 Lieberman & Sales, supra note 24 at 623; See also Elwork, Alfini & Sales, supra note 24.
34 Amy E Smith & Craig Haney, "Getting to the Point: Attempting to Improve Juror Comprehension of Capital Penalty Phase Instructions" (2011) 35 Law & Human Behavior 339 at 343-344. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10979-010-9246-0
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36 Smith & Haney, supra note 34 at 344.
37 Joel D Lieberman & Jamie Arndt, "Understanding the Limits of Limiting Instructions: Social Psychological Explanations for the Failures of Instructions to Disregard Pretrial Publicity and Other Inadmissible Evidence" (2000) 6:3 Psychol Pub Pol'y & L 677 at 693. https://doi.org/10.1037//1076-8971.6.3.677
38 Saul M Kassin & Samuel R Sommers, "Inadmissible Testimony, Instructions to Disregard, and the Jury: Substantive Versus Procedural Considerations" (1997) 23 Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 1046. See also Madelyn Chortek, "The Psychology of Unknowing: Inadmissible Evidence in Jury and Bench Trials" (2013) 32:1 Rev Litig 117. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672972310005
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40 Ibid at 689.
41 Ibid at 690-700; Baguley, McKimmie & Masser, supra note 22 at 298; Finkel, supra note 39 at 623; Lieberman & Sales, supra note 24.
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43 This codebook can be found at Toronto Metropolitan University's digital repository: https://borealisdata.ca/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.5683/SP3/BI5IWJ.
44 Ibid.
45 See discussion in Rehaag & Evans Cameron, supra note 2.
46 See Rebecca Hamlin, Let Me Be a Refugee: Administrative Justice and the Politics of Asylum in the United States, Canada, and Australia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
47 Evans Cameron, supra note 15.
48 Rogers et al, supra note 2.
49 E.g. Chris Barker, Nancy Pistrang & Robert Elliott, Research Methods in Clinical Psychology: An Introduction for Students and Practitioners, 2d ed (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2002).
50 Above note 43.
51 P-values express the likelihood that an observation (or a more extreme observation) might occur under a given statistical model. Small p-values are frequently interpreted as evidence that observed data does not appear to be well explained by a given statistical model. Typically, p-values are used to calculate the likelihood that an observation (or a more extreme observation), might occur in circumstances where the null hypothesis is true, if all relevant assumptions hold. For a discussion about p-values (and some of their limitations and misuses), see RL Wasserstein & Nicole A Lazar, "The ASA Statement on p-Values: Context, Process, and Purpose" (2016) 70:2 The American Statistician 129 https://doi.org/10.1080/00031305.2016.1154108; Chittaranjan Andrade, "The P Value and Statistical Significance: Misunderstandings, Explanations, Challenges, and Alternatives" (2019) 41:3 Indian J Psychol Med 210. https://doi.org/10.4103/IJPSYM.IJPSYM_193_19
52 Above note 43.
53 Arman Daniel Catterson, Laura P Naumann & Oliver P John, "Confidence of Social Judgments is Not Just Error: Individual Differences in the Structure, Stability, and Social Functions of Perceptual Confidence" (2015) 58 Journal of Research in Personality 11 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2015.06.001; Benjamin C Ruisch & Chadly Stern, "The Confident Conservative: Ideological Differences in Judgment and Decision-Making Confidence" (2021) 150:3 Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 527. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000898
54 For further discussion of 'off screen' evidence, see Capers, supra note 3.
55 M K Ward & Adam W Meade, "Dealing with Careless Responding in Survey Data: Prevention, Identification, and Recommended Best Practices" (2023) 74:1 Annual Review of Psychology 577. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-040422-045007
56 P158
57 Despite its lack of scientific foundation, synergology has a following in the Canadian legal system, notably in Quebec. For a recent article debunking this practice, authored by over fifty leading deception researchers, see Denault et al, "The Analysis of Nonverbal Communication: The Dangers of Pseudoscience in Security and Justice Contexts" (2020) 30:1 Anuario de Psicología Jurídica 1.
58 P224
59 P183
60 P250
61 P210
62 P212
63 P276
64 P224
65 P212
66 Steven K Kapp et al, "'People Should be Allowed to do What They Like': Autistic Adults' Views and Experiences of Stimming" (2019) 23:7 Autism 1782 at 1782. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361319829628
67 The authors are grateful to a student in Prof. Evans Cameron's class for this insightful observation. Prof. Evans Cameron unfortunately forgot to note which student made this point. If you were this student, please contact the authors. They owe you lunch.
68 See discussion in Evans Cameron supra, note 15.
