Forget good cop, bad cop - here's the real psychology of two-person interrogation
We're all familiar with the good cop, bad cop interrogation technique so often portrayed in TV and film. In reality, at least in the UK, when two officers perform a joint suspect interview, one of them asks the questions and the other simply takes notes. That doesn't mean the double-interviewer set-up can't be exploited to make it easier to spot whether a suspect is lying.
In a new study Samantha Mann and her colleagues tested the effect of the demeanour of the note-taking interviewer. Over 100 hundred students and university staff were allocated to either tell the truth in answering detailed questions about a real job they really had, or they were asked to lie and answer questions about a fictional job.
After having three days to prepare, the participants were invited to a psychology lab for questioning. A female interviewer with a neutral style asked the questions (e.g. "If you were training me to do your job for a day, what things would I need to know about it?") while a second male interviewer took notes. Crucially, this male interviewer either struck a supportive demeanour (smiling and nodding his head), a neutral demeanour, or acted as if he had suspicions (frowning and shaking his head). The participants were incentivised with the promise of a £5 reward if they fooled the interviewers.
Here's the headline result - the truth-telling participants gave more detailed answers than the liars, but only when the second interviewer provided a supportive presence. This runs ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Christian Jarrett Source Type: blogs
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