Interview and interrogation methods and their effects on true and false confessions

Meissner, Christian A.; Redlich, Allison D.; Bhatt, Sujeeta; Brandon, Susan E.

doi:10.4073/csr.2012.13

Cited by 94 publications

(137 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…The reason may be in their promotion in the Slovenian interrogation manual. It would appear that the manual needs revision, cautioning its readers about the dangers of using those interrogation techniques that have been argued as ones that can significantly increase the risk of false confessions (Meissner et al, 2012). Police interrogations have been the subject of a growing body of scientific research.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Police interrogation practice in Slovenia

Areh

Walsh

Bull

2015

Psychology, Crime & Law

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Interrogation techniques are well explored, but in Slovenia it has\ud remained unknown what interrogation techniques are used and\ud what the basic characteristics of suspect interrogations are. The\ud Slovenian interrogation manual proposes some coercive\ud interrogation techniques and neglects their weaknesses. The aim\ud of the current study was to examine Slovenian police officers’\ud beliefs as to the basic characteristics of their interrogations and\ud whether techniques proposed by the manual are used in practice\ud to begin to provide some insight into what actually happens in\ud such interrogations. A survey instrument was used to obtain selfreport\ud data from a sample of criminal investigators. From 86\ud completed questionnaires it was found that a typical interrogation\ud of a suspect lasts around 90 minutes and is not recorded.\ud Interviewers typically use three interrogation techniques namely (i)\ud conducting interrogations in isolation; (ii) identifying contradictions\ud in the suspect’s story; and (iii) confronting the suspect with\ud evidence. Findings suggest that some coercive interrogation\ud techniques are used in practice (e.g. offering moral justifications,\ud alluding to have evidence of guilt, good cop/bad cop routine, and\ud minimization). The study is the first insight into the practices of\ud Slovenian investigators when questioning suspects. Differences\ud among general, white-collar and organized crime investigators are\ud also discussed

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Police interrogation practice in Slovenia

Areh

Walsh

Bull

2015

Psychology, Crime & Law

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“…The studies that have examined rapport in interrogations have done so by comparing the effectiveness of different interrogation approaches (e.g., informational-gathering v. accusatorial). These studies have examined how clusters of techniques influence investigative outcomes (Bull & Soukara, 2010;Meissner et al, 2012;Walsh & Bull, 2012). For example, a recent meta analysis found that the information-gathering approach, generally characterized by a non-confrontational interviewer who builds…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At the end of the interrogation, the police investigator asks the suspect for a confession, and a detailed account of what happened (Kassin & Gudjonsson, 2004;Meissner, Russano, & Narchet, 2010). Research demonstrates that this confrontational and accusatorial approach to interrogations may successfully elicit confessions from the guilty but also puts innocent suspects at risk of confessing to a crime they did not commit (see Kassin et al, 2010;Meissner, Redlich, Bhatt, & Brandon, 2012).…”

Section: Background and Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of Rapport Building in Police Interrogations: Can Rapport Improve the Diagnosticity of Confession Evidence?

Villalba¹

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Police investigators rely heavily on eliciting confessions from suspects to solve crimes and prosecute offenders. Therefore, it is essential to develop evidence-based interrogation techniques that will motivate guilty suspects to confess but minimize false confessions from the innocent. Currently, there is little scientific support for specific interrogation techniques that may increase true confessions and decrease false confessions. Rapport building is a promising possibility. Despite its recommendation in police interrogation guidelines, there is no scientific evidence showing the effect of rapport building in police interrogations. The current study examined, experimentally, whether using rapport as an interrogation technique would influence participants' decisions to confess to a wrongdoing. It was hypothesized that building rapport with participants would lead to more true confessions and fewer false confessions than not building rapport. One hundred and sixty nine undergraduates participated in the study.Participants worked on logic problems together and individually, with a study confederate. The confederate asked half of the participants for help in one of the individual problems -effectively breaking the rules of the study. After working on these vii problems, a research assistant playing the role of interviewer came into the room, built rapport or not with participants, accused all participants of cheating by sharing answers on the individual problems, and asked them to sign a statement admitting their guilt.Results indicated that guilty participants were more likely to sign the confession statement than innocent participants. However, there were no significant differences on participants' confession decisions based on the level of rapport they experienced. Results do not provide support for the hypothesis that building rapport increases the likelihood of obtaining true confessions and decreases the likelihood of obtaining false confessions.These findings suggest that, despite the overwhelming recommendation for the use of rapport with suspects, its actual implementation may not have a direct impact on the outcome of interrogations.

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“…The aim of the present study is to investigate expectancy effects on behaviour when expectancies have only been implied through information about the participant's group membership. Given that most research on investigative interviews has used accusatory or confession driven interview techniques to study interviewee behaviour (see Kassin et al, 2009;Meissner, Redlich, Bhatt, & Brandon, 2012), little is known about expectancy confirmation effects in non-accusatory environments while using information-gathering techniques. Additionally, inducing expectancy effects as a stereotype has not been investigated in a forensic setting using non-racially motivated false beliefs.…”

Section: Present Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Interview Expectancies: Awareness of potential biases influences behaviour in interviewees

Adams-Quackenbush¹,

Horselenberg²,

Hubert³

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Expectancy effects are known to influence behaviour so that what is expected appears to be true. In the present study, expectancy was induced using (fabricated) information about honesty and specific group membership. We tested Targets in a non-accusatory interview environment using neutral and information-gathering type questions. We hypothesized that persons exposed to the negative information (the expectancy) would demonstrate behaviour consistent with increased cognitive load, and we found evidence to support this prediction. Due to the investigative nature of the information gathering questions, we also expected that Targets exposed to the expectancy would exhibit more of these behaviours in the investigative portion of the interview. We found some behaviour to support this prediction (i.e., shorter responses and increased speech disturbances); however, indicators of performance altering load were not observed during this phase of the interview. These findings support the hypothesis that expectancy effects can noticeably alter interviewee behaviour.

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Interview and interrogation methods and their effects on true and false confessions

Cited by 94 publications

References 74 publications

Police interrogation practice in Slovenia

Police interrogation practice in Slovenia

The Effect of Rapport Building in Police Interrogations: Can Rapport Improve the Diagnosticity of Confession Evidence?

Interview Expectancies: Awareness of potential biases influences behaviour in interviewees

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