Critique Of The Article The Influence Of Spaciousness On Investigative Interviews By K. Hoogesteyn, E.Meijer, And A. Vrij

During an investigation, police officers rely on interrogation tactics and strategies to assess whether someone is telling the truth. Often, the outcome of an investigation depends heavily on the interview and interrogation skills of officers. While many studies research and analyze the association between police organizational and strategic factors, in the article “The influence of spaciousness on investigative interviews”, Katherine Hoogesteyn, Ewout Meijer and Aldert Vrij (2019) research the association between the environmental factors in which the interviews take place and the disclosure of crime‐related information, as well as perceptions of rapport. While the article didn’t produce evidence of influence of room size and interpersonal distance on disclosure, it did provide initial evidence that manipulating room size in an interview context could positively impact rapport‐building.

Participants engaged in a virtual reality scenario depicting a crime and were interviewed as suspects in either a larger or smaller room, at a closer or larger distance. The researchers examined the influence of physical spaciousness, manipulated as room size and interpersonal sitting distance between interviewer and interviewee on the disclosure of crime‐related information, as well as perceptions of rapport and overall interview experience. Results didn’t generate a connection between room size and sitting distance on disclosure rates, but did, however, indicate higher perceptions of rapport, compared to those interviewed in the small room.

Order custom essay Critique Of The Article The Influence Of Spaciousness On Investigative Interviews By K. Hoogesteyn, E.Meijer, And A. Vrij with free plagiarism report

450+ experts on 30 subjects Starting from 3 hours delivery

Get Essay Help

The researchers discussed an important topic, as one aspect of the communication process during police investigative interviews that has been neglected is the environment in which the interview takes place. The approach of context manipulation is useful because it can influence all the other components of a fruitful investigative interview, such as emotion, collaboration, evidence and rapport. Moreover, room size and interpersonal distance are relevant to investigate because they determine physical spaciousness, and spaciousness has been shown to be promising for improving interviewees’ affective experience and self‐disclosure in the fields of communication and health care.

While the researchers’ hypothesis that participants in the larger room will disclose more information, was not supported by their findings, an exploratory analysis did affirm their hypothesis that participants interviewed in the larger room reported more positive interview experience in terms of spaciousness, and consequently higher perceptions of rapport, compared to those interviewed in the small room. Furthermore, relationships in room size and disclosure on one hand and sitting distance and disclosure on the other hand, are often mediated by rapport‐building.

While the qualitative study focused on an important topic in investigative interviewing, it couldn’t be used as a precedent. First, the sample size was small. Out of the 159 recruited participants, 20 had to be excluded, consisting the final sample of 139 participants. In addition, the sample is subjective as participants consisted of 25 males and 114 females, with an average age of 21.2 years, which makes it difficult to generalize the findings to the larger population. Another factor of the study’s limitations was the length of the interview. On average, interviews lasted 7 min and 24 s, of which the average time spent on rapport was 63 s. In reality, interviews can take a long time. Occasionally, where there is little substance to the allegation and the

investigating officer is very ready to accept the explanation put forward, the interviews can last as little as 10-15 minutes (Akehurst and Vrij, 1999). Generally speaking, however, they last much longer; typically interviews last between 45 minutes and 1.5 hours (Akehurst and Vrij, 1999).

This article explored the valuable and useful elements of both context manipulation and rapport building in conducting police investigative interviews. One of the barriers investigators face is cooperation, so physically altered environment, designed to maximize comfort, trust and cooperation, could be one useful tool to address this problem. Although the researchers found no correlation between room size and sitting distance and disclosure rates, they shared encouraging results on the influence of spaciousness positively impacting rapport building. However, the small sample size and lack of diversity among the participants limits the generalizability of these findings. Future research on the influence of room spaciousness among a larger more diverse sample is necessary to provide evidence of the impact of room spaciousness on disclosure rates and rapport building in investigative interviews.

References

Akehurst, L., & Vrij, A. (1999). Creating suspects in police interviews 1. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 29(1), 192-210
Hoogesteyn, K., Meijer, E., & Vrij, A. (2019). The influence of room spaciousness on investigative interviews. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 24(2), 215-228. 

Don't let plagiarism ruin your grade

Run a free check or have your essay done for you

Check my essay Hire Writer