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Rapport building is a widely recommended investigative technique that sometimes improves eyewitness recall. However, a clear understanding of how rapport impacts witness recall is lacking. We explored benevolence as a mediator between rapport and eyewitness recall while fixing the pre‐interview interaction to 3 min. Further, we explored whether rapport would lead to benevolence transferring to a subsequent unrelated task. A total of 109 participants viewed a mock crime and were interviewed about the crime either with or without rapport. Afterward, participants were asked to volunteer for a future research opportunity. Results indicated that rapport participants reported higher benevolence than control participants. Additionally, rapport participants volunteered to help the investigator more often than control participants. Exploratory factor analysis extracted two "benevolence" factors: (1) Effortful informativeness and (2) positive and rewarding. Our findings have implications for real‐world investigators who may appeal to witnesses' desire to be helpful and their resultant sense of satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This archival study was the first in Sweden, and the first outside of the US and the UK, to apply the (Kelly et al., Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 9, 165–178, 2013) taxonomy of interrogation methods framework to repeated police interrogations of adult suspects in high‐stakes crimes. Audio/video recordings (N = 19) were collected from the Swedish Police Authority of repeated interrogations of three suspects in three criminal cases. The interaction between interrogators and suspects were scored according to the taxonomy framework (Kelly et al., Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 9, 165–178, 2013; Kelly et al., Law and Human Behavior, 40, 295–309, 2016). First, there was an association between the use of different domains. Rapport and relationship building was moderately and negatively associated with confrontation/competition and presentation of evidence. Moreover, confrontation/competition was moderately and positively related to emotion provocation and presentation of evidence. Second, changes were observed during the interrogations. Presentation of evidence was lower in the beginning than in the middle block. Suspect cooperation was higher in the beginning than both the middle and end blocks. Third, an ordered logistic regression showed that rapport and relationship building were associated with increased suspect cooperation, and confrontation/competition and presentation of evidence were associated with decreased cooperation. The study's results are mostly in line with other taxonomy studies on high‐stakes crimes from the US and the UK. The findings are discussed in light of theoretical frameworks, empirical findings, and current police practice. We also highlight the need for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Intoxicated witnesses are common, making it important to understand alcohol's impact on witness accuracy and suggestibility. Participants assigned to an immediate retrieval condition encoded and recalled in one of the three intoxication conditions: sober control, placebo, or intoxicated. Participants in the delayed retrieval condition were assigned to encode in one of the three intoxication conditions, returned a week later, and were assigned to retrieve in one of the three intoxication conditions. Intoxication condition at encoding was fully crossed with intoxication condition at retrieval in the delayed condition. Participants encoded a mock crime video and retrieved via a forced‐choice test, with answers already circled (purportedly by a prior participant); half of the precircled responses were incorrect. When recalling after a delay only, intoxication at encoding increased agreement with incorrect suggested answers and decreased accuracy. Results suggest intoxicated witnesses may benefit from being interviewed immediately rather than after a sobering delay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Police commonly interview intoxicated suspects. This is concerning when suspects are innocent because intoxication often leads to a higher risk for impulsive decision making and reduces inhibition. However, the manner in which intoxication affects people's reporting of unethical or criminal actions carried out by themselves or others is unknown and was thus addressed in the current study. Participants (N = 116) were randomly assigned to one of six conditions based on a 2 (transgression: self, other) × 3 (alcohol condition: low‐to‐moderate intoxication, placebo, sober‐control) between‐participants design. After drinking their assigned beverages, participants were asked to disclose a transgression. No main effect of alcohol emerged. However, the odds that participants would report a transgression were significantly higher if they were asked to report a personal, rather than someone else's, transgression. Overall, low‐to‐moderate intoxication did not increase the likelihood of sensitive information disclosure in this initial study, but additional research is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Interpreters play an important role in the criminal justice system, yet little is known about the way interpreters are used. This survey of U.S. law enforcement (N = 299) assessed practices and perceptions regarding interpreter use during interviews with nonnative English speakers. Investigators reported using colleagues more often than professional interpreters, using interpreters more often with suspects and in certain crimes (e.g., domestic violence), and that interpreters are usually at least partially informed about case facts prior to translating. Investigators responded to experimental vignettes, and results indicated they were more likely to seek and obtain interpreters when an interviewee has lived in the United States for fewer years; however, the language spoken and the interviewee's role (e.g., witness vs. suspect) did not affect decisions to request an interpreter. Several avenues for future experimental research are identified and discussed, including interpreting over the phone and interpreter susceptibility to biases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is minimal research on metacognition in alcohol-intoxicated participants. Study 1 examined metacognition across sober, intoxicated, and placebo groups, with the intoxicated group's breath alcohol concentration reaching 0.074 g/210 L on average immediately prior to the metacognition task. Participants answered cued recall general knowledge questions and provided confidence ratings and feeling-of-knowing judgments. They then completed a recognition (i.e., multiple choice) version of the same task, indicating an answer and a confidence rating for each question. Findings suggest that metacognitive accuracy generally did not vary across intoxication levels, although the control group's retrospective confidence judgments better discriminated between accurate and inaccurate responses than the alcohol groups in the recognition task. Study 2 surveyed academic psychologists about their expectations regarding the relation between alcohol and metacognition. Study 1's results were counter to their expectations, as respondents generally predicted a relation would be present. We discuss the implications for alcohol and memory.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some innocent suspects rely on the memory of strangers to corroborate their alibis. However, no research has examined whether such potential alibi corroborators can accurately recognize an innocent suspect with whom they previously interacted. We developed a novel alibi corroboration paradigm in which undergraduate students (representing innocent suspects who would later provide an alibi) interacted with naïve university employees (representing potential alibi corroborators). Each student briefly interacted with a different naïve university employee (n = 60), and were also each yoked to a different employee with whom they did not interact (n = 60). Employees were presented 24 hours later with either a single photograph of the student or a six-person array containing a photograph of the student and were asked if they recognized anyone. The majority of employees failed to make a correct recognition of the student. False recognitions, however, were rare. Students exhibited overconfidence that they would be recognized. Findings imply that innocent suspects who rely on strangers to corroborate their alibis may be at risk. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building rapport with adult witnesses and suspects is recommended by major investigative interviewing protocols (e.g., Cognitive Interview and the Army Field Manual in the USA and PEACE in the UK). Although recent research suggests that building rapport can sometimes benefit police investigations by increasing the accuracy of adult eyewitness reports and potentially enhance the diagnosticity of evidence obtained from suspects, little data exist regarding how law enforcement interviewers actually define and build rapport in real-world investigations. To fill this void, the present study distributed a questionnaire containing open and closed-ended questions to 123 law enforcement interviewers in police training courses to determine how they conceptualize and build rapport with adult interviewees. Results indicate that a majority of law enforcement interviewers define rapport as a positive relationship involving trust and communication, with a strong minority defining rapport as a 'positive or negative' relationship. Further, law enforcement interviewers reported building rapport with adult witnesses and suspects in a similar manner, often by using verbal techniques (e.g., discussing common interests via small talk) and non-verbal techniques (e.g., displaying understanding via empathy and sympathy). Theoretical and applied implications of these results are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite growing interest in intelligence interviewing, there is little empirical research directly addressing interrogations conducted with the goal of collecting human intelligence (HUMINT). The current study used an experimental intelligence-gathering paradigm to test the efficacy of two clusters of emotion-based interrogation approaches from the US Army Field Manual. Results suggest that both Positive and Negative Emotional Approaches increased the collection of information from both guilty and innocent participants when compared with a Direct Approach. While the emotional approaches produced similar gains in information regardless of valence, positive approaches reduced anxiety, increased perceptions of a fostering atmosphere, and enhanced the relationship between fostering atmosphere and information gain. The implications for the use of these techniques in the intelligence interviewing context are discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to accurately assess credibility is important in countless situations, including many in which individuals being assessed are not speaking their native language. There is reason to believe that native and non-native speakers may behave differently when lying and that detectors may have a bias to believe non-native speakers are lying. However, very little is known about detecting deception in non-native speakers, and the few existing studies have not resulted in consistent findings. The current research compared the ability to detect lies and truths in native speakers with that in non-native speakers and looked at differences in the cues displayed via the Psychologically Based Credibility Assessment Tool. Results from two samples with different demographic characteristics and backgrounds indicated that there was a bias to believe that non-native speakers were lying. These results may have implications regarding the use of interpreters in settings where credibility is being assessed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although memory deteriorates over time, people may be able to maintain high accuracy by metacognitively monitoring the quality of their memories and strategically controlling their memory reports. We test two mechanisms of metacognitive control: Exercising a report option (withholding uncertain responses) and adjusting response precision (providing imprecise, but likely accurate, responses). Participants observed a mock crime and were interviewed after 10 minutes or 1 week. Interviews consisted of answerable questions in one of three formats (free narrative, cued recall, yes/no), allowing participants to exert more or less control over their answers. Participants' reports showed tradeoffs between accuracy, quantity and precision of information. Depending on the question format, participants maintained high accuracy even at the delayed report either by opting not to answer (yes/no or cued recall) or by providing imprecise answers (cued recall or free narrative). We discuss implications for experimental research, metacognitive theory and the criminal justice system. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although psychologists have urged police officers to use double blind line-up procedures during their investigations, police officers state that these would be difficult to administer and most have been reluctant to implement this change. Four studies examine whether lay people's judgements about the guilt of a suspect vary according to whether a brief written summary of a case described the identification procedure as double blind or non-double blind. The effects were all small (and almost all non-significant). Most people do not treat double blind line-ups differently from non-double blind line-ups when assessing the guilt of a defendant. Either police investigators should stop using this biased method or police investigators and others in the judicial system (e.g. jurors, judges) should be informed of this bias when evaluating results from any line-up. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]