How does Question Content Influence Guilty Suspects’ Inferences about what the Interviewer knows?

Abstract

The aim of this study was to understand how introducing a higher suspicion tone and specific crime-related details in the content of investigative questions influences inferences guilty suspects draw regarding prior information held by the interviewer. We tested three factors related to the specific content in questions namely level of suspicion (high and low suspicion), level of specificity (the amount of crime-related detail-general and specific) and topic discussion (whether a certain crime-related activity was discussed or not). We recruited N= 232 participants who read a crime narrative and interview transcripts related to the crime. They assumed the role of the suspect in the narrative and responded to scales measuring their perceived interviewer knowledge (PIK) based on the interviews. We found that a specific crime-related topic, when discussed increased PIK. We also found that a topic discussed with specific crime-related details in the questions increased PIK. This study provides support for our findings from a previous study that was the first to test guilty suspects’ inferences from a psycholinguistic perspective, and gives us a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms during police interviews.

How do the questions asked affect suspects' perceptions of the interviewer's prior knowledge?

“…Third, we limited the factors we tested to crime‐related content in questions and did not explore other surrounding determinants, for example, the tone of the interviewer. For example, if the interviewer used a more accusatory tone during questioning versus a more neutral tone (Srivatsav, Luke, Granhag, & Vrij, ). Exploring such factors surrounding an interview could provide a broader understanding of how an interviewer can influence a suspect's inferences regarding their prior knowledge.…”