“I think you did it!”: Examining the effect of presuming guilt on the verbal output of innocent suspects during brief interviews

Abstract

Innocent suspects interviewed by a guilt‐presumptive versus innocence‐presumptive or neutral interviewer may tend more to display non‐verbal behaviours which neutral judges consider indicative of guilt. We examined the effects of interviewer's presumption of guilt on innocent mock suspects' alibis. Participants (N = 90) provided an alibi to convince an interviewer of their innocence of a theft after she implied that she believed that they were guilty or innocent or that she had no belief about their veracity. On the basis of existing conflicting findings for suspects' verbal behaviour during accusatory interviews, we predicted that alibis in the guilt‐belief condition would contain the highest or lowest number of correct details with overall higher or poorer accuracy rates, respectively. Although participants perceived the interviewer's presumptive approach, the number of correct details provided and accuracy rates of alibis did not differ significantly between conditions. We propose explanations to these findings and future research paths.

Right place, wrong time: the limitations of mental reinstatement of context on alibi-elicitation

“…Results demonstrate that repeated alibis were commonly inconsistent, either partially or completely, across several details including whereabouts, timing, actions performed before and after the time in question. More recently, alibi researchers have begun to examine alibi accuracy more directly by establishing ground truth as part of the study procedures (Leins & Charman, 2016;Portnoy et al, 2019). To demonstrate, the to-be-recalled alibi event in Portnoy et al (2019) occurred in the laboratory: participants performed numerous tasks, including matching name tags with photos and sorting memo cards.…”

“…More recently, alibi researchers have begun to examine alibi accuracy more directly by establishing ground truth as part of the study procedures (Leins & Charman, 2016;Portnoy et al, 2019). To demonstrate, the to-be-recalled alibi event in Portnoy et al (2019) occurred in the laboratory: participants performed numerous tasks, including matching name tags with photos and sorting memo cards. Next, they were accused of the theft of a wallet and exposed to one of three interview styles: guilt-presumptive, innocent, or neutral.…”

Beliefs about suspect alibis: A survey of lay people in the United Kingdom, Israel, and Sweden

“…Participants additionally tended to believe that when suspects feel that they are being interviewed by a guilt-presumptive interviewer, they are likely to be more forthcoming and not to confess to a crime. However, existing research has found no evidence that when suspects are interviewed by a guiltpresumptive interviewer, their verbal behaviour differs from that of suspects interviewed by a neutral or innocence-presumptive interviewer (e.g., Hill et al, 2008;Portnoy et al, 2019). Nevertheless, research on the effects of interviewers' presumption of guilt on suspects' verbal behaviour during interviews is relatively new and scarce and has examined narrow interviewing contexts (e.g., interviewing mock suspects over the telephone as in Hill et al, 2008).…”

“…Research on the effects of interviewers’ presumption of guilt on the verbal behaviour of suspects during interviews is relatively new. Findings to date have shown no correlation between interviewers’ presumption of guilt and suspects’ tendency to confess or deny involvement in a crime (Hill et al, 2008), nor have they identified evidence that presumption of guilt affects the informativeness and accuracy of innocent suspects’ alibis (Portnoy et al, 2019). However, research has shown that this presumption of guilt can lead interviewers to conduct more aggressive interviews with suspects and ultimately increase the probability that the interviewer will actually judge the suspect as guilty at the end of the interview, irrespective of the suspect’s statement (Hill et al, 2008; Kassin et al, 2003).…”

“…Then, we asked participants to indicate their belief regarding the extent to which a presumption of guilt held by the interviewer at the beginning of suspect interviews might affect the interviewer's behaviour, and to indicate the likelihood that suspects provide more details and confess to committing the crime (regardless of their actual guilt) in response to a guilt-presumptive interviewer. Despite research on effects of interviewer’s presumption of guilt on suspects’ behaviour during interviews being relatively scarce and new (e.g., Hill et al, 2008; Portnoy et al, 2019), we wanted to examine what participants believed the effects of interviewers’ presumption of guilt on the process of suspect interviews to be and how their beliefs would align with existing research findings.…”