Interrogation:
it’s not like in the movies.
Rapport trumps torture.
In films and tv programs aggression and threats are used in interrogations to get information out of a suspect. This approach is often common in police and armed forces around the world and yet evidence suggests that this it’s not effective.
Christiansen et al (2018), building on the work of Alison & Alison (2017), studied UK police interviews with 48 terrorist detainees across 181 interviews and coded the interpersonal behaviours of both the detainees and the interrogators across the categories authoritative, passive, confrontational and cooperative.
They found that adaptive interviewer behaviour was positively associated with adaptive detainee behaviour, leading indirectly to increased information. The study suggests that the greater the interviewer’s interpersonal skills the more likely the detainee was to respond and the more useful information was obtained. Similarly authoritative and confrontational behaviours resulted in a less cooperative detainee and less useful information. It seems that building a rapport seems more effective that intimidation.
Original research:
Christiansen et al (2018): https://doi.org/10.1111/lcrp.12111
Alison & Alison (2017): http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/amp0000064