Title

Is Three A Crowd? Examining Rapport In Investigative Interviews

Keywords

Group size; Investigative interview; LIWC; Presence of others; Rapport

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. © 2012 American Psychological Association.

Publication Date

3-1-2013

Publication Title

Group Dynamics

Volume

17

Issue

1

Number of Pages

1-13

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029686

Socpus ID

84884199708 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/84884199708

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