How Awareness of Possible Evidence Induces Forthcoming Counter‐Interrogation Strategies

Abstract

We propose that suspects' counter-interrogation strategies vary as a function of their perception of the interrogator's knowledge about the events in question. The present study investigates the verbal behavior of guilty and innocent suspects when they are aware that there may be incriminating evidence against them. Participants (N = 143) took part in either a simulated act of terrorism or a benign task. They were then interviewed about their activities. Participants were randomly assigned to receive no additional information or to be informed that an investigative team may have collected evidence from surveillance cameras. Results suggest that when alerted to possible evidence against them, guilty suspects adopt either extremely withholding or extremely forthcoming verbal strategies. Theoretical implications of these results are discussed.

Deconstructing the evidence: The effects of reliability and proximity of evidence on suspect responses and counter-interrogation tactics.

“…Indeed, previous experimental research on evidence disclosure has found distributions of statement-evidence consistency highly similar to the skewed distributions we observed for high-reliability evidence only (e.g., Clemens & Grolig, 2019). The similarity in data distributions gives us confidence that the decisionmaking we observed in this online study has at least some correspondence with behavior researchers have observed in laboratory experiments on interviewing, which is even at times, more severely skewed than those we observed here (e.g., Luke et al, 2014). As such, the results of the present study may be underestimates of more powerful underlying effects of proximity and reliability of evidence.…”

Interviewing strategically to elicit admissions from guilty suspects.

“…Put differently, the confrontation informed the suspects that the hypothesis formed initially was not correct, and that their withholding strategy was not sufficient to reach their goal. In line with this model and with the empirical findings presented by Luke, Dawson, et al (2014) and , the suspects in the SUE-Confrontation condition were more likely to adjust their counterinterrogation strategies, from a less to a more forthcoming strategy. We argue, from the perspective of self-regulation theory, that the suspects realized the limitations of their initial strategy, and perceived contradicting the possible evidence as a threat to their credibility.…”

“…As a result, the suspects in the SUE-Confrontation condition displayed a bimodal pattern in their choice of counter-interrogation strategies for the critical phase. This is in line with the findings of Luke, Dawson et al (2014), where approximately half of the suspects adopted forthcoming strategies and half adopted withholding strategies. Although it is not clear why some suspects were withholding from the beginning to the end, we offer two possible explanations.…”

Managing disclosure outcomes in intelligence interviews

“…Conversely, those who wanted to avoid incrimination, no matter what, refrained from disclosing the guilty knowledge. Other studies have produced results similar to the findings of Luke et al [ 12 ] just described [ 10 , 17 ].…”