Winners Presentation Awards 2024
Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom
I am a third-year PhD student in the Department of Psychology at the University of Portsmouth. My doctoral research, funded by CREST, explores trust and rapport in information-gathering contexts, such as investigative interviews or officer-informant relationships. I am examining the individual and conjoint effects of these factors on online interview outcomes, including the quantity and quality of information gathered and the interviewee’s perceptions of the interview process. With my PhD expected to be completed in September, I will transition to a Postdoctoral Research Fellow role at Nottingham Trent University in October, continuing my work on trust in security settings.
Abstract: Information elicitation attempts increasingly take place remotely and interviewers who build rapport with their interviewees, whether online or offline, tend to elicit more information. While the role of rapport-building in investigative interviewing has been studied extensively, research has only begun to examine the role of trust in information gathering. Recent findings suggest that demonstrating trustworthiness increases information yield in face-to-face interviews. However, this effect has not been systematically compared with a control group, nor has it been replicated in remote environments. Using a 2 (Trustworthiness: trustworthy vs untrustworthy) x 2 (Rapport-building: present vs absent) between-subject design, we investigated whether interviewer trustworthiness and rapport-building affect the amount of information disclosed in a simulated vetting interview via phone. First, participants (N=189) were asked to imagine that their friend ‘John’ is applying to be a police officer. Participants were then given information about John’s life covering topics such as family, employment, drug use, and addiction history. Using different behavioural indicators in a novel trustworthiness paradigm, the interviewer was manipulated to be perceived as untrustworthy or trustworthy. After completing a manipulation check, participants were interviewed via Zoom (audio only to mimic a phone call), during which interviewers either did or did not build rapport. Lastly, participants rated perceived rapport, trust levels, reporting strategies, and attitudes toward police legitimacy. ANCOVA results indicated that rapport-building increased the total amount of disclosed information, though exploratory analysis showed no increase in sensitive information disclosure. The trustworthiness of the interviewer did not show a direct main effect on total information disclosure but indirectly influenced both total and sensitive disclosures through trust perceptions. Interaction effects between trustworthiness and rapport-building were non-significant. Our findings suggest that vetting officers should strive to appear trustworthy and build rapport to establish trust with their interviewees. Such strategies might aid in eliciting detailed responses and acquiring relevant sensitive information in vetting contexts.
Sarah Kelleher is a PhD student and lecturer in forensic psychology at the University of Kent. Her research focuses on the impact of rape myths in juror decisions and victim evaluations in sexual violence cases. She is particularly interested in how cognitive biases surrounding sexual violence contribute to the justice gap and whether these can be minimised using educational interventions.
Abstract: The literature has extensively illustrated the influence of rape myths on victim evaluations and verdict decisions, with calls for jury education to be implemented to minimise their negative impact. However, the lack of an articulated theoretical model explaining how rape myth acceptance impacts juror decision-making has stunted the development of a focused educational intervention for jurors in cases of sexual violence. This presentation will explore the findings from three empirical studies addressing these aims and examining the role and malleability of rape myths in juror decision-making. Specifically, the cross-sectional design of study 1 and experimental design of study 2 examined the fit and validity of the proposed theoretical model using advanced structural equation modelling techniques. Additionally, study 3 evaluated the effectiveness of the newly developed educational video in reducing the impact of rape myths on jurors’ verdicts and victim evaluations. In the first study, the proposed model showed good fit to the data, supporting the theory that rape myth factors influence credibility, responsibility and empathy judgements, which subsequently impact verdicts. In the second study, increased rape-myth-relevant information resulted in significantly fewer guilty verdicts, which may be attributed to significant differences in perceived victim credibility between the conditions. Finally, the results from the third study suggested that the intervention was successful in reducing the influence of rape myths on credibility judgements. We discuss the methodological limitations and the implications of these findings for future research and applications to the criminal justice system in the UK and beyond.
I am a PhD student at KU Leuven, Belgium, and Maastricht University, the Netherlands. I am interested in how people disclose and come forward about very negative experience that they have had. My research focuses on this disclosure process, complex patterns of disclosure, and how disclosure following false denials can affect memory based testimonies.
Abstract: In the current study, we examined 38 National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) interview transcripts, and 30 control transcripts from interviews from an earlier study (Erens et al., 2022) conducted with alleged child victims of abuse at Dutch child protection services. We investigated whether denial and avoidance rates differed statistically significantly based on the interview protocol used. We detected 57 denial and 282 avoidance statements across the 68 interviews. No statistically significant differences emerged between 1) the proportion of denials using NICHD (42%, n = 16/ 38) and control interviews (30%, n = 9/ 30), and 2) the average number of denial statements between NICHD (M =0.84) and control interviews (M = 0.83). Furthermore, denials (and avoidances) were not more or less likely to occur in response to certain types of questions, even though the majority of denials in our sample occurred in response to option-posing questions (60%, n = 34/ 57). Denials did occur statistically significantly less often within the first half of the individual interviews in NICHD than control interviews. Our findings call attention to difficulties child protection services face in investigative interviews with alleged child victims.