Research on embodied cognition and priming show that human behavior is influenced nonconsciously by the environment in metaphoric ways. Previous research has shown that conceptual priming can lead people to disclose sensitive information (Davis, Soref, Villalobos, & Mikulincer, 2016; Dawson, Hartwig, & Brimbal, 2015). Here, we sought to examine whether concepts of openness can be activated to promote disclosure within the interview itself, through the physical setting. In two laboratory studies, participants were exposed to details of a mock environmental terrorism conspiracy through a courier task, which they were subsequently interviewed about in different settings. In Study 1, participants were interviewed in either a room designed to activate openness, or a prototypically enclosed, bare custodial interview room. In Study 2, we manipulated both architectural and interior features of both rooms. Challenging the status quo that a small room is optimal for investigative interviewing, our findings offer compelling evidence that the spaciousness of an interview room can influence a person’s tendency to be “open” with or “closed” about information.

We sought to identify motivations to resist cooperation in intelligence interviews and develop techniques to overcome this resistance. One source of resistance can arise because of concerns for affiliations (e.g., “I do not want to inform on my friends/family/fellow countryman”). We investigated two avenues of rapport building—approach and avoidance—designed to overcome this concern. In a modified cheating paradigm, our participants (N = 116) became affiliated with a confederate who they then witnessed cheating. Participants were interviewed about the event in a 2 (approach: present vs. absent) × 2 (avoid: present vs. absent) design. The interviewer used either an approach technique that aligned them with the interviewer (portrayed as a morally good person) or an avoid technique that moved them away from the culprit (portrayed as nefarious), neither, or both. The approach technique increased rapport between the interviewer and participant. However, the avoid technique decreased the amount information elicited. When submitted to a mediation model, the approach technique had a positive indirect effect on information yield via perceived rapport and cooperation, while this was not the case for the avoid technique. An exploratory moderator analysis revealed that sympathy for the confederate moderated the effect of the avoid technique on information disclosed, where the more sympathy a participant felt for the confederate, the less information he or she provided. Implications for interviewing are discussed.

No abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine the effectiveness of the micro‐expressions training tool (METT) in identifying and using micro‐expressions to improve lie detection. Participants (n = 90) were randomly assigned to receive training in micro‐expressions recognition, a bogus control training, or no training. All participants made veracity judgements of five randomly selected videos of targets providing deceptive or truthful statements. With the use of the Bayesian analyses, we found that the METT group did not outperform those in the bogus training and no training groups. Further, overall accuracy was slightly below chance. Implications of these results are discussed.