Rapport-building in suspects’ police interviews

Author(s):  
Gabrina Pounds
PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. e0256084
Author(s):  
Zacharia Nahouli ◽  
Coral J. Dando ◽  
Jay-Marie Mackenzie ◽  
Andreas Aresti

Building rapport during police interviews is argued as important for improving on the completeness and accuracy of information provided by witnesses and victims. However, little experimental research has clearly operationalised rapport and investigated the impact of rapport behaviours on episodic memory. Eighty adults watched a video of a mock crime event and 24-hours later were randomly allocated to an interview condition where verbal and/or behavioural (non-verbal) rapport techniques were manipulated. Memorial performance measures revealed significantly more correct information, without a concomitant increase in errors, was elicited when behavioural rapport was present, a superiority effect found in both the free and probed recall phase of interviews. The presence of verbal rapport was found to reduce recall accuracy in the free recall phase of interviews. Post-interview feedback revealed significant multivariate effects for the presence of behavioural (only) rapport and combined (behavioural + verbal) rapport. Participants rated their interview experience far more positively when these types of rapport were present compared to when verbal (only) rapport or no rapport was present. These findings add weight to the importance of rapport in supporting eyewitness cognition, highlighting the potential consequences of impoverished social behaviours for building rapport during dyadic interactions, suggesting ‘doing’ rather than simply ‘saying’ may be more beneficial.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-121
Author(s):  
Gabrina Pounds

Abstract Both research and police guidelines acknowledge the value of rapport-building in police interview with suspects (ISs) and provide some insight into how ‘rapport’ may be defined and built in this context. Rapport is, however, difficult to operationalise and assess in practice, other than for the routine legal clarification offered to suspects at the beginning of the interview. This paper takes an original discourse-pragmatic and ethnographic approach to investigating the forms that rapport takes in a sample of authentic ISs, with particular reference to two dimensions, empathy and face. The article discusses the value and suitability of the identified empathic and ‘face’-relevant expressions with respect to current interview aims and practice. The discussion highlights the underlying bi-functionality of rapport in ISs, demonstrating how the two functions may be reconciled in police interview training and practice.


2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniella K. Villalba ◽  
Lindsay C. Malloy ◽  
Michael E. Lamb

Author(s):  
Roger W. Shuy

Much is written about how criminal suspects, defendants, and undercover targets use ambiguous language in their interactions with police, prosecutors, and undercover agents. This book examines the other side of the coin, describing fifteen criminal investigations demonstrating how police, prosecutors, undercover agents, and complainants use deceptive ambiguity with their subjects, which leads to misrepresentations of the speech events, schemas, agendas, speech acts, lexicon, and grammar. These misrepresentations affect the perceptions of judges and juries about the subjects’ motives, predispositions, intentions, and voluntariness. Deception is commonly considered intentional while ambiguity is often excused as unintentional performance errors. Although perhaps overreliance on Grice’s maxim of sincerity leads some to believe this, interactions of suspects, defendants, and targets with representatives of law are adversarial, non-cooperative events that enable participants to ignore or violate the cooperative principle. One effective way the government does this is to use ambiguity deceptively. Later listeners to the recordings of such conversations may not recognize this ambiguity and react in ways that the subjects may not have intended. Deceptive ambiguity is clearly intentional in undercover operations and the case examples illustrate that the practice also is alive and well in police interviews and prosecutorial questioning. The book concludes with a summary of how the deceptive ambiguity used by representatives of the government affected the perception of the subjects’ predisposition, intentionality and voluntariness, followed by a comparison of the relative frequency of deceptive ambiguity used by the government in its representations of speech events, schemas, agendas, speech acts, lexicon, and grammar.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Breanna R. Campbell ◽  
Sabrina Swoger ◽  
Alexa Tabackman ◽  
Eleanor Hilgart ◽  
Benjamin Elliott ◽  
...  

AbstractPositiveLinks (PL) is an evidence-based mobile health intervention promoting engagement in care for people living with HIV. PL offers secure, in-app patient-provider messaging. We investigated messaging during the early COVID-19 pandemic, comparing messages exchanged between 01/13/2020 and 03/01/2020 (“Pre-COVID”) to messages exchanged between 03/02/2020 and 04/19/2020 (“early COVID”) using Poisson regression. We performed qualitative analysis on a subset of messages exchanged between 02/01/2020 and 03/31/2020. Between “Pre-COVID” and “early COVID” periods, weekly member and provider messaging rates increased significantly. Of the messages analyzed qualitatively, most (53.3%) addressed medical topics, and more than a fifth (21.3%) addressed social issues. COVID-related messages often focused on care coordination and risk information; half of COVID messages contained rapport-building. PL patients (“members”) and providers used in-app secure messaging to reach out to one another, identifying needs, organizing receipt of healthcare resources, and strengthening patient-care team relationships. These findings underscore the importance of low-barrier messaging during a crisis.


Author(s):  
Iracema Medeiros d’Abreu ◽  
Irene Raguenet Troccoli ◽  
João Felipe Rammelt Sauerbronn
Keyword(s):  

Dementia ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 147130122110368
Author(s):  
Catherine Riffin ◽  
Karlee Patrick ◽  
Sylvia L. Lin ◽  
M. Carrington Reid ◽  
Keela Herr ◽  
...  

Background Pain in older persons with dementia is both under-detected and under-managed. Family caregivers can play an important role in addressing these deficiencies by communicating their care recipient’s symptoms and behaviors to medical providers, but little is known about how caregivers and providers approach pain-related discussions in the context of dementia. The goal of this study was to explore how ambulatory care providers and family caregivers of persons with dementia view pain communication. Methods In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with family caregivers ( n = 18) and healthcare providers involved in dementia care ( n = 16). Interviews focused on three specific content areas: (1) caregivers’ roles in communicating about pain in persons with dementia, (2) challenges experienced when communicating about pain in persons with dementia, and (3) strategies and recommendations for optimizing communication in this context. All interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using the constant comparative method of data analysis. Results Caregivers and providers described various roles that caregivers assumed in communication processes, such as serving as historians, interpreters, and advocates. They identified two key features of problematic communication—receipt of inadequate information and interpersonal conflict about the care recipient’s pain—and articulated how ambiguity around pain and dementia, as well as preexisting beliefs and emotions, contributed to communication challenges. They also offered several suggestions to improve caregiver–provider communication processes, including the use of (1) written records to enhance the accuracy of caregivers’ reports and ensure that providers had specific information to inform symptom management and treatment plans, (2) pain scales and follow-up discussions to establish baseline data and clarify treatment recommendations, and (3) collaboration and rapport-building strategies to validate the caregivers’ contributions and maximize a team-based decision-making. Conclusion Receipt of inadequate information and interpersonal conflict are key challenges to caregiver–provider communication regarding pain in persons with dementia. Written records, pain scales, and rapport-building strategies may help to address these challenges.


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