Under Pressure

This chapter discusses the concept and potential issues surrounding “urgent safety” or “imminent threat” interviews. It also summarizes a series of observations of law enforcement officers’ performance during simulated urgent interviews across a series of training exercises. The authors’ observations (both from psychologists as trainers and police facilitators) include the following: (1) safety interviewing appears to require a different skill set from evidential interviewing; (2) officers struggled to communicate a sense of intensity, gravity, and urgency required of an interview that aims to obtain information very quickly to preserve life and maintain public safety; (3) in order to improve, interviewers must practice these sorts of interactions more often (they require deliberate practice and feedback with guidance); and (4) elements of interviewing and time-sensitive questioning in the military may offer a useful template of the intensity and urgency required in police safety interviews.

The Interpersonal Management of Difficult Behavior

This chapter discusses the ORBIT approach to managing difficult interpersonal behavior. It outlines the history and evolution of theories of interpersonal relating, which informed the ORBIT interpersonal circumplex. The ORBIT circumplex organizes behaviors across two axes: the power axis (ranging from controlling to capitulating behaviors) and the intimacy axis (ranging from cooperative to confrontational behaviors). The model consists of eight octants of behavior based on combinations of these two axes (e.g., controlling, controlling–cooperative, controlling–confrontational). The chapter includes the ORBIT coding framework for identifying each of these groups of behavior and their adaptive and maladaptive variants. Real-world examples of interrogations with convicted terrorist Anders Breivik and Parkland School shooter Nikolas Cruz are used to highlight the complexities of different suspect behaviors and how they would be assessed using the ORBIT interpersonal wheels.

A Blighted History

This chapter outlines the history of “harsh” interrogation methods based on coercion and torture. This includes discussion of the US “Enhanced Interrogation” Program and the British military’s development and use of the “Five Techniques,” along with real-world examples, including the interrogation of two detainees thought to be associated with the 2001 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. The chapter discusses the underlying theory behind the use of torture and coercion and explains why these interrogation methods are ineffective at obtaining reliable information from detainees. It also describes the reasons why torture continues to be used. Such reasons relate to revenge, dehumanization, and hatred.

ORBIT Outside the Room

This chapter is concerned with individual and social factors that may influence suspects’ decision-making during police interviews, as well as with the procedural and contextual landscape in which the interviews take place. The focus is on presenting descriptive data on a sample of 20 terrorist organization and organized criminal gang suspects and data regarding individual and contextual factors relating to each suspect in the sample. These factors include fear, status and relationship, criminal background, legal advice, strength of evidence, timing of arrest, type or circumstances of arrest or detention, and duration between offense and arrest. Using these outside-the-room factors as a framework, this chapter provides descriptive data on these factors as it pertained to the 20 suspects in the sample as well as data on the outcome of the process. The interviews with the suspects are also examined to identify and present instances of these factors arising in interactions between police interviewers and the suspects.

Out of ORBIT

This chapter focuses on the complex history that psychologists have had with involvement in interrogations and the how psychologists might continue to work in this field. It discusses the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA’s) controversial MKUltra program, which was designed to explore brainwashing techniques and the various influential people associated with it. The chapter then outlines the potential ethical issues surrounding psychologists’ involvement in interrogations and the principles within which ORBIT must be used. The chapter concludes with a discussion of where research on interrogation might head next.

How to Build Rapport

This chapter examines the impact of the UK National Counter-Terrorism Training program (Alcyone). Alcyone is a 6-day course that provides the following: (1) psychological training in Observing Rapport Based Interpersonal Techniques (ORBIT), (2) input on pre-interview briefing, and (3) legislation and input on safety interviewing. Approximately 80% of the course involves scenario-based role-play with additional knowledge checks and short lecture inputs. The chapter details the analysis used to assess the program’s impact. Multivariate analysis of variance revealed that Alcyone-trained officers showed a significantly greater reliance on adaptive interpersonal skills that had been taught in the course and demonstrated significantly fewer maladaptive interpersonal behaviors that they had been taught to avoid. There was also a significant increase in the use of rapport-based behaviors and a greater extraction of information from the suspects. Although several other factors may also account for an increase in yield, the increase in all the aspects that these officers had been taught in the course provides support that the course had a positive impact. This has implications for interview training programs and for the dissemination of evidence-based practice for counterterrorism interviewing.

Impact on Counter-Interrogation and Yield

This chapter outlines the initial research conducted into the efficacy of the ORBIT model on detainees’ use of counter-interrogation tactics and the amount of evidentially useful information gained from detainees. Counter-interrogation tactics have been defined as a deliberate strategy adopted by a suspect to resist cooperating and may be consciously self-generated or learned from instructions or in training. This chapter outlines the research showing the use of counter-interrogation tactics with individuals from different terrorist groups and the effects of rapport-based strategies in reducing them. The chapter uses a real-world example of an interrogation with Saddam Hussein.

ORBIT

This chapter provides a detailed overview of the Observing Rapport Based Interpersonal Techniques (ORBIT) model of interviewing and its principles. It discusses how ORBIT is unique in that it evolved out of analysis of the largest sample of real-world interrogations in the world. The authors explain how they gained access to the data and their approach to analysis and coding. The chapter then describes the ORBIT approach to building rapport and describes ORBIT’s interpersonal behavior model. It also outlines the other variables that make up the ORBIT coding framework, including their measure of detainee engagement and yield. It uses a real-world example of an interrogation with Colonel Russel Williams to show how the ORBIT model works in practice.

Rapport, Resistance, and Reactance

This chapter outlines the definition of and use of rapport, based on principles of humanistic psychology. While rapport has been recognized in countless studies as a key feature of successful interrogations, it has historically been poorly defined and operationalized. This chapter uses real-world examples to highlight what rapport is and what it is not. The chapter also highlights key concepts and strategies drawn from the motivational interviewing literature that can be successfully applied to an interrogation context. Specifically, the chapter discusses a form of interviewee resistance known as “reactance,” which can be created by an interviewer trying too hard to make someone talk.