An investigation into interrogative suggestibility - Literature review Example

?What influence does the the interviewer’s questioning style have on a suspect’s answers during police interviews? An investigation into Interrogative Suggestibility. Police interviews are an essential part of modern criminology and they are tightly regulated by laws such as Section 60 of the PACE Act, 1984 in the United Kingdom. During training police officers learn how to make use of various questioning tactics which are designed to obtain the information they need in order to solve crimes. Great efforts are made to ensure that these techniques are effective, in order to maintain accuracy and save time in all later stages of investigation and prosecution. Correct and proper questioning is also vital in establishing the innocence of people and there is extensive literature on the ways and means which police use to obtain evidence from witnesses and suspects. One important constraint is the PACE ruling which determines that interviewee statements obtained by ‘oppression’ during police interviewing cannot be used as evidence against a suspect in a court of law (Memon, Vrij and Bull, 2004). The definition of “oppression” is, however, arguable, and similarly the extent of permissible deception during police interviewing as a part of their tactic to gain a confession is the subject of much debate. (Underwager and Wakefield, 1992); Irving and Hilgendorf, 1980) Another safeguard against improper questioning is the requirement that police officers inform suspects of their rights before they engage in questioning which can lead to prosecution. This is called a “Miranda warning” in the United States after a famous case and a “police caution” in the United Kingdom. The latter was revised in 1994 to the following formulation: “You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.” It has been pointed out, however, that many people who are questioned in police custody struggle to understand the literal meaning of this warning, and most do not understand the legal implications that it refers to. (Fenner, Gudjonnson and Clare, 2002) A third PACE ruling, namely the requirement to record police interviews, appears to have had some effects on police questioning techniques, for example it is suggested that this measure has reduced the amount of persuasive questioning, and has resulted in fewer verbal confessions on the part of interviewees (Hearst, 1986). This finding is, however, disputed (Moston and Stevenson, 1993) with the alternative suggestion that the rate of confessions has remained the same and that police persuasion has shifted to non-recorded contexts. There are important questions to be asked about the fairness of police questioning techniques, even within these regulations and this literature review examines issues like the different attributes that interviewees possess, and how these variables interact with attributes and tactics of interviewers. The field is complex, and most studies focus on just one or two of the variables on either side of this equation. An important contribution to our understanding of these issues has been made by the Icelandic scholar Gisli Gudjonsson who studied the extent to which interviewees can be influenced by the way that questioning is carried out. Gudjonsson observed that people vary in the way that they react to questioning styles, and that some people are more suggestible and more likely to change their evidence if they are put under pressure by the interviewer. (Gudjonsson, 1984) This is an important insight because it means that both interview style and characteristics of the interviewee are variables which can have an effect on the interviewing process. Gudjonsson established a fixed “scale of interrogative suggestibility” which has become standard in discussions of these topics. Psychological tests were designed to measure Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale (GSS) scores and links were shown between high GSS scores and a more likelihood that interviewees would make coerced internalised false confession (Sigurdsson and Gudjonsson, 1996, Horselenberg et al. 2003). The implication of these studies is that those who falsely confess hold a more suggestible personality trait. Later work by Gudjonsson has focussed on the responsibility that police have in the light of particular vulnerabilities that interviewees may have (Gudjonsson, 2010). A number of smaller empirical studies have also analysed other factors which influence the outcome of interviewing. The introduction of new information was studied, and it was shown that when happens during an interview it can lead people to be susceptible to it. (Kassin and Kiechel, 1996). An important consideration is the fact that some interviewees can be classed as “vulnerable” and that this can significantly affect the way that they score in the GSS, and consequently the reliability of any information that they give in an interview situation. Besides the obvious vulnerabilities of very young or very old age, illness or significant mental deficits, there may also be invisible vulnerabilities. Drake et al (2008) identify the experience of negative life events as a relevant factor in the performance of individuals in police interviews, but interestingly also concluded that levels of self-esteem were not significantly related to any GSS components. In terms of interviewer behaviour, this study found that interviewees who had suffered a large number of negative life events were more susceptinle to tactics such as leading questions and negative feedback (Drake et al, 2008). Within law enforcement agencies there is a clear distinction between interviewing, which is usually a straightforward fact gathering process in which questioners build rapport with interviewees, and interrogation, in which there is a clear objective to obtain incriminating evidence. A widely used framework for this activity is the so-called “Reid technique” which consists the following 9 steps: 1. Direct Positive Confrontatioin 2. Theme Development 3. Handling Denials 4. Overcoming Objections 5. Procurement and Retention of a Suspect’s Attention 6. Handling a Suspect’s Passive Mood 7. Presenting an Alternative Question 8. Having the Suspect Orally Relate Various Details of the Offense 9. Converting an Oral Confession into a Written Confession (Inbau, Reid et al., 2001, pp. 209-398) Tactics such as maximising the presentation of evidence to make a situation appear extremely severe and likely to lead to dire consequences can lead to a situation where suspects confess in order to avoid overstated “worst case scenario” consequences. Alternatively, minimizing the severity of an offense can lead subjects to confess to something without realizing the repercussions that this may have. (Inbau, Reid et al., 2001) Several empirical studies have been set up to examine exactly how such tactics affect people who are being questioned. In one study on students who were asked to perform inputting tasks on a computer keyboard, for example, the computer was caused to crash and then researchers analysed how far students were willing to accept responsibility for this event. (Kassin and Kiechel, 1996) In a series of graded follow-up interviewing sessions, some using low key questioning and others using more oppressive tactics, it was found that the subjects were far more likely to confess to something they did not do if they were subjected to fast paced interrogation combined with false witness testimony. False confession is a potentially serious occurrence in criminology and these findings raise many issues for police practice. A similar study was conducted by Newring and O’Donohue to examine whether students in such an experiment could be influenced to incriminate peers. The addition of a small financial remuneration was made in order to create motivation, and the results confirmed “the malleability of witness behaviour when faced with the Reid interview techniques.” (Newring and O’Donohue, 2008, p. 98) There are some limitations in an experimental approach since the situation of students doing an experiment carries less serious potential repercussions than the situation of real suspects during police questioning, but nevertheless these studies do illustrate some of the mechanisms that police use, and measurable effects that arise from these methods, such as false confessions and false implicating statements. University student demographics are also somewhat different to the demographics of those who most frequently are subjected to police interviewing, and so it would be unsafe to generalize these findings. On the contrary, the section of the population most likely to encounter police interviewing techniques is in general more likely to suffer learning disabilities While Gudjonsson concentrates mainly on the behaviour of suspects during interviews, others have studied in detail the way that interviewers behave and how this affects different types of suspects. (McGroarty and Baxter, 2009; Bain and Baxter, 2000) Some distinguish between two levels of pressure in interviewing style, such as “pressured and friendly” (Baxter, Boon and Marley, 2006) or “abrupt and friendly” Bain and Baxter. (2000) Unsurprisingly these studies show that suspects display more suggestibility and more willingness to shift from their views when they are subjected to the less friendly styles. It appears also that increased psychological distance in the unfriendly type of interview is a factor which can lead to increased suggestibility in the interviewee. The addition of new information by the interviewer during an interview has been demonstrated to have the ability to change a person’s memory of an event, even if this information is blatantly contradictory (Loftus, 1979) and this suggests that interviewers could, whether deliberately or unintentionally, influence the way that interviewees answer questions. The formation of memory is a complex process, and psychologists have found that even under non-pressured conditions, there is considerable variation in the way that people perceive and then remember events, even to the extent that people are quite commonly report remembering features which are non-factual and illusory. (Winograd et al. 1998) In addition to this natural variation, negative feedback can also increase susceptibility and the presence of a second interviewer can increase stress levels in the interviewee, all of which can cause the interviewee to recall things which may not have actually happened. (McGroarty and Baxter, 2007) In summary, then, the vast literature on interrogative suggestibility appears to confirm the usefulness of the Gudjonnson Suggestibility Scale but at the same time it refers to a number of variables which may affect its reliability. Determining whether differing results are due to individual variations or to interviewing techniques is fraught with difficulty, and different methods may produce widely differing results. This may explain why some of the studies mentioned above contradict each other . The most significant variables lie in the attributes of the interviewee but there are also variations in interviewer behaviour in exact correspondence to these individual variables which require further investigation. The present study seeks to apply the GSDS1 scale to a controlled interview situation and with particular reference to the use of an interrogative and leading questioning technique. By narrowing the scope in this way, and excluding some of the more extreme interrogation tactics from consideration, it is hoped that the results, though small scakle, may nonetheless be more reliable. References Bain, S A & Baxter, J S. (2000). Interrogative Suggestibility: The role of interviewer behaviour. Legal and Criminological psychology. Vol 5, pp 123-133. The British Psychological Society. Baxter J. (2004). Managing pressure in police stations. The Police Journal. Vol 77, No.4. pp 303-308. Baxter, J S, Boon, J C W & Marley, C. (2006). Interrogative pressure and responses to minimally leading questions. Personality and Individual Differences. Vol 40, pp 87-98. Boon, J C W & Baxter, J S. (2000). Minimizing interrogative suggestibility. Legal and criminological psychology. Vol 5, pp 273-284. Clare, I.C.H. and Gudjonsson, G.H. 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