Is Three a Crowd? Examining Rapport in Investigative Interviews

    Authors

    T. Driskell; E. L. Blickensderfer;E. Salas

    Comments

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    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Group Dyn.-Theory Res. Pract.

    Keywords

    rapport; investigative interview; presence of others; group size; LIWC; LANGUAGE USE; POST-9/11; ATTENTION; WORDS; SELF; Psychology, Social

    Abstract

    This research constitutes an initial empirical examination of how the introduction of a third party impacts interviewee rapport in an investigative interview setting. Whereas some have argued that employing two interviewers may be beneficial in an investigative interview setting, others have speculated that adding a "third person in the communications loop" (U.S. Department of the Army, 2006) during an investigative interview may negatively impact the establishment of rapport. This research draws on group dynamics research and adopts a content-analytic approach using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC; Pennebaker, Booth, & Francis, 2007) to examine interviewee rapport in real-world investigative interviews. The comparison of dyadic interviews in which one interviewer was present and triadic interviews in which two interviewers were present revealed no significant reduction in interviewee rapport. These findings suggest that the anecdotal concern that "three is a crowd" and that the addition of a third party may result in decreased rapport may be unfounded. Further research on the group dynamics of the investigative interview is discussed.

    Journal Title

    Group Dynamics-Theory Research and Practice

    Volume

    17

    Issue/Number

    1

    Publication Date

    1-1-2013

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    1

    Last Page

    13

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000315340700001

    ISSN

    1089-2699

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