Educing Information: Interrogation - National Intelligence University

are not based on what is objectively likely to happen, but on what the suspect
believes at the time to be the likely consequences.
Hilgendorf and Irving argue that threats and inducements, even when slight
and implicit, can markedly influence the suspect’s decision to confess because of
the perceived power the police have over the situation and the apparent credibility
of their words. Similarly, they point to a number of social, psychological, and
environmental factors that can affect or seriously impair the suspect’s decision
making during police interrogation. The most salient factors as listed by
Gudjonsson are as follows: 181
• The police can manipulate the social and self-approval utilities (like the
suspect’s feelings of competence and self-esteem) during interrogation
in order to influence his decision-making.
• The interrogators can manipulate the suspect’s perceptions of the likely
outcome concerning a given course of action. For example, interrogators
can minimize the seriousness of the offense.
• Interrogators can impair the suspect’s ability to cope with information
processing and decision-making through various means like social,
psychological and environmental manipulation.
Hilgendorf and Irving conclude that, given the interrogator’s considerable
authority, the interrogation situation puts strong pressure on suspects to place
excessive emphasis in their decision making on the approval or disapproval of
the interrogator, and to be extremely sensitive to all communications, both verbal
and non-verbal, that they receive from the interrogator. 182 Physical confinement
supports and facilitates these pressures, and the effect becomes more pronounced
the longer the detention lasts. The combined effect of these pressures and other
forms of environmental and situational stress inherent in custodial interrogations
can adversely affect “efficient performance on the complex decision-making task”
confronting interrogation subjects. 183
Psychoanalytic Model
Gudjonsson points out that this model rests upon the assumption that “the
feeling of guilt is the fundamental cause of confessions.” 184 Based on Freudian
concepts of the id and ego, Reik’s work attempts to show that the unconscious
compulsion to confess plays a seminal role in crime. 185 According to Reik, a
confession is “an attempt at reconciliation that the superego undertakes in order
to settle the quarrel between the ego and the id.” 186 Thus, a confession primarily
serves the role of relieving people of the overwhelming feeling of guilt occasioned
181
Gudjonsson, see note 110, p. 122.
182
Hilgendorf and Irving, see note 173, p. 81.
183
Id.
184
Gudjonsson, see note 110, p. 122.
185
Theodor Reik, The Compulsion to Confess: On the Psychoanalysis of Crime and Punishment,
translated by Katherine Jones (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1959).
186
Id., p. 216.
151