Applied

• Interview


  • Non-accusatory
  • Dialogue – question & answer format
  • Start collecting relevant info
  • Assess subject's truthfulness
  • Assess possibility of interrogation
• Interrogation


  • Accusatory
  • Monologue – discourage the suspect from talking until ready to tell the truth
  • Obtain a court-admissible confession
• Reid's (1962) Nine step interrogation technique

  1. Positive confrontation

  2. Theme development

  3. Handling denials

  4. Overcoming objections

  5. Procurement and retention of suspect's attention

  6. Handling the suspect's passive mood

  7. Presenting an alternative question

  8. Get the suspect to confess verbally and to tell the full details of their crime

  9. Conversion of the verbal confession into written, audio or video taped
• Strengths of 9 step interrogation

  • These steps are justified since you are interrogating someone whom you believe is guilty
  • A confession from the suspect benefits society as it leads to a guilty plea – time and money is saved as a lengthy trial is not necessary
• Weaknesses of 9 step interrogation

  • If the suspect has experienced such a technique before, they can toy with the interrogator and waste their time
  • Often fails to identify innocent suspects, and as a result, innocent people are coerced into a false confession
• Coerced Confessions


  Factors that lead to likelihood of false confessions: The defendant, The arrest, Mental/physical state, The interrogation
• Cognitive Interview (CI)


  Technique to maximise information retrieval from witnesses: Context reinstatement, Report everything, Narrative re-ordering, Recall from different perspectives
• Enhanced Cognitive Interview (ECI)

  Contains the same 4 techniques as CI but adds social aspects to the setting and procedure: Establishing rapport, Report everything, Context reinstatement, Narrative reordering, Ask important questions, Closing the interview, Evaluate the interview
• Memon and Higham (1999) review of the cognitive interview
• Suggestions for training interviewers

  • Interviewers should be given adequate training in CI techniques – a two day training programme is recommended
  • Direct training to a select group of officers who have the potential to make good interviewers
• PEACE interviewing framework


  1. Planning and preparation

  2. Engage and explain

  3. Account – classification, challenge

  4. Closure

  5. Evaluation
• Strengths of PEACE


  • Effective in regards to crime
  • It is ethical
  • Saves time, money and resources
  • Effective in finding inconsistencies in stories
• Weaknesses of PEACE


  • Time consuming to carry out
  • Must ensure effective training is provided
  • May not always be practical in terms of time constraints
• Forensic Hypnosis can be used to retrieve information that may not have been consciously available to a witness, but it is argued that hypnosis puts people in a suggestible state where they can be easily misled by the interviewer/hypnotist
• Audio Recording Interviews is a strategy used to ensure there is sufficient evidence that an interview took place, and to verify what was said in it
• What is the background to psychology in the courtroom?

  how juries might be influenced
• What factors may juries be influenced by?

  attractiveness

  race

  language
• What was Stewart's 1985 study?

  how juries are influenced by attractiveness

  60 real trials

  Pennsylvania, USA

  defendants scored on physical attractiveness/ neatness/ cleanliness/ quality of dress
• What did Stewart find?

  attractiveness was negatively correlated with punishment

  no correlation between attractiveness and race
• What did Sigall and Ostrove find about attractiveness and sentence time?

  longer sentence was correlated with unattractiveness for burglary but not fraud
• What did Pfiefer and Ogloff find about race?

  white students were more likely to think the black defendant is guilty especially when there was a white victim
• What did Lakoff find about language?

  witnesses who used 'I think' or 'perhaps' and had rising intonation at the end of a sentence were perceived less intelligent, believable and likeable
• What did Dixon investigate?

  the role of accent and context in perceptions of guilt
• What was Dixon's aim?

  to test whether race and type of crime would influence guilt attributions

  and test the hypothesis that a Brummie accented suspect would produce stronger attributions of guilt
• What was Dixon's sample?

  119 white undergraduate psychology students (excluding those from Birmingham)

  University college, Worcester
• What was Dixon's method/design?

  lab experiment

  independent measures

  2x2x2 factorial design
• What were Dixon's 3 IVs?

  blue collar vs white collar crime

  Brummie vs standard accent

  black or white suspect
• What was Dixon's procedure?

  listened to a 2 min recorded mock interview

  completed rating scales

  rates suspects guilt on 7 point scale

  speech evaluation instrument (SEI) used to measure superiority, attractiveness and dynamism
• What were Dixon's results?

  highest guilt ratings were for Brummie, black suspect with blue collar crime

  Brummie accent rated lower on superiority and more guilty than standard accent

  superiority and attractiveness predicted guilt

  black were not rated significantly more guilt than white
• What are 3 applications for psychology in the courtroom?


  expert witnesses

  inadmissible evidence

  effect of order testimony
• How do expert witnesses affect jury decisions?

  they are knowledgeable on the subject so are trusted by the jury

  it means the jury are not just reliant on witness confidence
• What is inadmissible evidence?


  when something is said that shouldn't have been and the jury are told to disregard it
• What did Broeder (1959) find about inadmissible evidence?

  there was a bigger liability award ($13,000 vs $4,000) when the jury were told to disregard information that the victim had insurance

  banned information has greater importance
• How does the story order affect juries decisions?

  when arranged in a sensible way, the version of events is coherent and therefore more understood by the jury
• How does the primacy and recency effect affect jury decisions?

  opening and closing statements have the greatest impact on the jury as they are more likely to remember the first and last things
• What are strengths of research into psychology in the courtroom?

  high control - high internal validity

  standardised - reliable

  Dixon - ethical

  useful - makes judges aware of what can affect jury
• What are weaknesses of research into psychology in the courtroom?

  Dixon - undergrad students - not generalisable

  ethnocentric

  questionable EV - mock interviews e.t.c
• What is the background to crime prevention?

  features of neighbourhoods to prevent crime
• What are features of neighbourhoods that can help prevent crime?

  defensible space

  zero tolerance policing
• What did Newman find about defensible space?

  open spaces attract vandalism

  the layout should be so that intruders are easily spotted

  fences and hedges should be markers to show the areas is private not public