• DOI:10.1002/ACP.1789
• Corpus ID: 42533915

A comfortable witness is a good witness: rapport‐building and susceptibility to misinformation in an investigative mock‐crime interview

@article{Vallano2008ACW,
  title={A comfortable witness is a good witness: rapport‐building and susceptibility to misinformation in an investigative mock‐crime interview},
  author={Jonathan Patrick Vallano and Nadja Schreiber Compo},
  journal={Applied Cognitive Psychology},
  year={2008},
  volume={25},
  pages={960-970}
}

• J. Vallano, N. S. Compo
• Published 5 March 2008
• Psychology
• Applied Cognitive Psychology

Summary: Major investigative interviewing protocols such as the Cognitive Interview recommend that investigators build rapport with cooperative adult witnesses at the beginning of a police interview. Although research substantiates the benefits of rapport-building on the accuracy of child witness reports, few studies have examined whether similar benefits apply to adult witnesses. The present study investigated whether verbal rapport-building techniques increase adult witness report accuracy and decrease their susceptibility to post-event misinformation. One-hundred eleven college adults viewed a videotaped mock-crime, received post-event misinformation (or correct information) about the crime, and were subsequently interviewed by a research assistant who built rapport (or did not build rapport) before recalling the mock-crime. Results indicated that rapport-building increased the quality of witness recall by decreasing the percentage of inaccurate and misinformation reported, particularly in response to open-ended questions. We discuss implications and recommendations for law enforcement. Copyright # 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.