The Effect of Rapport Building in Police Interrogations: Can Rapport Improve the Diagnosticity of Confession Evidence?

Abstract

Police investigators rely heavily on eliciting confessions from suspects to solve crimes and prosecute offenders. Therefore, it is essential to develop evidence-based interrogation techniques that will motivate guilty suspects to confess but minimize false confessions from the innocent. Currently, there is little scientific support for specific interrogation techniques that may increase true confessions and decrease false confessions. Rapport building is a promising possibility. Despite its recommendation in police interrogation guidelines, there is no scientific evidence showing the effect of rapport building in police interrogations. The current study examined, experimentally, whether using rapport as an interrogation technique would influence participants' decisions to confess to a wrongdoing. It was hypothesized that building rapport with participants would lead to more true confessions and fewer false confessions than not building rapport. One hundred and sixty nine undergraduates participated in the study.Participants worked on logic problems together and individually, with a study confederate. The confederate asked half of the participants for help in one of the individual problems -effectively breaking the rules of the study. After working on these vii problems, a research assistant playing the role of interviewer came into the room, built rapport or not with participants, accused all participants of cheating by sharing answers on the individual problems, and asked them to sign a statement admitting their guilt.Results indicated that guilty participants were more likely to sign the confession statement than innocent participants. However, there were no significant differences on participants' confession decisions based on the level of rapport they experienced. Results do not provide support for the hypothesis that building rapport increases the likelihood of obtaining true confessions and decreases the likelihood of obtaining false confessions.These findings suggest that, despite the overwhelming recommendation for the use of rapport with suspects, its actual implementation may not have a direct impact on the outcome of interrogations.

Rapport building in suspect interviewing: A comparison of relationship- and procedure-based approaches in a laboratory setting.

“…The current study's findings also suggest that the discrepancies in previous laboratory studies could be explained by the presence or absence of manipulation of procedure-based techniques (Villalba, 2014;Wachi et al, 2018).…”

“…As shown in Table 1, the relationship-based approach focuses on the positive personal bond or relationship with suspects, with the purposes of relieving the interviewee's anxiety and eliciting fondness from interviewees. This is the approach that has been used to build rapport with adult witnesses (e.g., Kieckhaefer et al, 2014) and suspects (Villalba, 2014) in previous laboratory research. Interviewing techniques related to this approach include showing a friendly and close attitude (e.g., the use of first name and/or speaking in a casual and warm tone), initiating small talk (e.g., asking "icebreaking" questions unrelated to the interrogation process), self-disclosure from both interviewer and interviewee (e.g., the interviewer talks about his or her background or feelings and encourages the interviewee to do the same), and displaying positive nonverbal behaviors (e.g., smiling, open body posture and/or frequent eye contact).…”

“…Only a few studies manipulating rapport building behaviors or techniques have been conducted in laboratory settings. In Villalba’s (2014) unpublished study, “guilty” participants who were coaxed into breaking the rule of the experiment were interviewed with or without a 5-min rapport building phase (including self-disclosure, active listening, and displaying interest of the interviewee). However, rapport building did not influence confession rates.…”

The Impact of Individual Differences on Investigative Interviewing Performance

“…Witness Perception Questionnaire (Adopted from Duke (2013) and Villalba (2014)) Read the following statements and mark the appropriate choice by putting (X). (1=Strongly disagree 5=Strongly agree) 1 2 3 4 5…”

The Use of the Term Rapport in the Investigative Interviewing Literature: A Critical Examination of Definitions

“…It is generally accepted that rapport is important for conducting successfulthat is, ethical and effective-1 interviews (e.g., Vrij et al, 2017). However, existing literature reviews note that there is much divergence about how rapport is defined (Abbe & Brandon, 2013, 2014Gabbert et al, 2020;Vanderhallen & Vervaeke, 2014). Our aim is to systematically explore the extent of such variance, the commonalities shared by extant definitions, and how this state of affairs may influence the scientific investigation of rapport.…”