Focus on basic cognitive mechanisms and strategies in deception research (and remand custody of ‘wizards’ to Harry Potter movies)

Vrij and Granhag (2012) argue for a new direction in deception research based on structuring interviews in ways that more consistently elicit cues to deception. Although we find ourselves in general agreement, we believe there are several additional issues for researchers to consider. We emphasize the need to examine whether the proposed interview techniques lead to potential tradeoffs between information elicitation and deception detection, the importance of individual differences that may moderate previously obtained results, and the value of pursuing a goal of theoretical refinement alongside application development.