The Effects of Emotions on the Assessment of Child Sexual Abuse Interviews

Associations between emotions and psychophysiological states and confirmation bias in question formulation in ongoing simulated investigative interviews of child sexual abuse

“…Also, Segal et al (2022) concluded that child avatar interviews are emotionally engaging and open a path to further research on the effects of interviewer’s emotions on interviewing. A second study ( Segal et al, 2023 ) found a similar pattern of emotions in response to participants watching an actual dynamic interview. Participants responded with more sadness and disgust to confirmed CSA and with more relief to disconfirmed CSA interview outcomes.…”

“…An operator also has the ability to manually provide additional narrative details unrelated to the suspected abuse labeled side details. After each interview participants provide a final decision about the presence or absence of abuse, their certainty level about the decision and a brief report of what they think has happened to the avatar (Pompedda et al, 2015;Pompedda, 2018;Zhang et al, 2022;Segal et al, 2023).…”

“…Research suggests, that deviation from recommended guidelines for experts is at least party affected by their own cognitive biases, such as confirmation bias ( Dror, 2020 ; Vredeveldt et al, 2022 ). Delving further into the mechanism of effect of confirmation bias and the factors related to it, some research suggests that emotions are involved in affecting interviewers’ bias, thus shaping the interviewers’ questioning style (e.g., Oxburgh et al, 2006 ; Ask and Granhag, 2007 ; Leach et al, 2022 ), abuse assumptions and conclusions ( Zhang et al, 2022 ) and overall assessment of the interviews ( Segal et al, 2023 ). Thus, in the present study, we were interested in studying the associations between emotions and confirmation bias by investigating differences in interviewers’ emotions and psychophysiological states preceding closed and open questions in real time during ongoing simulated CSA interviews.…”

“…To address these issues, great effort has been invested to design more effective interview training programs (e.g., Powell et al, 2014 ; Pompedda et al, 2015 ; Haginoya et al, 2020 ; Hassan et al, 2022 ) where continuing practice and ongoing feedback have been used to sustain the training effects (for a recent review, see Powell et al, 2022 ). Beyond the established efficacy of these training programs, serious gaming ( Wouters et al, 2013 ) involving simulated avatar interviews ( Pompedda et al, 2015 ) can be used as a tool to study the fundamental psychological processes, such as emotional impact on decision making during interviews ( Zhang et al, 2022 ; Segal et al, 2023 ). For example, in an analysis of 2,084 simulated CSA interviews Zhang et al (2022) found that interviewers’ preliminary assumption of sexual abuse having taken place predicted more frequent use of not recommended questions, bias toward a conclusion of abuse after the interview, higher confidence in the conclusion as well as a decreased likelihood of reaching a correct conclusion given the same number of available relevant details.…”

“…However, reappraisal may lead to changes of the primary and/or secondary appraisals. Based on appraisal theories of emotion ( Arnold, 1960 ; Lazarus, 1966 , 1982 ), our previous research ( Segal et al, 2022 ; Zhang et al, 2022 ; Segal et al, 2023 ) and the literature mentioned above, we have drawn a preliminary model of the role of emotions and psychophysiological parameters on confirmation bias in question formulation in investigative CSA interviews (see Figure 1 ). A preliminary assumption of abuse is likely to result in more negative emotions of anger, disgust and sadness.…”