Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

352 A Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions
reference. The outcome of this process is assumed to influence the general
cognitive set and coping strategies of the interviewee during subsequent
questioning.
According to the model, negative feedback, if accepted by the interviewee,
does not automatically lead to a suggestible general cognitive set, although
this most commonly happens. For example, some interviewees may perceive
negative feedback constructively as a form of challenge to improve, which
as a result makes them take a more critical view of the situation.
4. Suggestible behavioural response followed by negative feedback. Gudjonsson
and Clark argue that negative feedback is unlikely to be given after
the interviewee has yielded to a suggestion, because it would confuse the
person and serve no useful purpose for the interrogator. However, there
are at least two circumstance where this situation may arise: first, where
the interrogator has asked several questions and the interviewee has only
yielded to some of them. The interrogator then attempts to elicit more yielding
answers by giving negative feedback about the interviewee’s overall
performance. This approach is used with the administration of some suggestibility
scales and will be discussed in the next chapter. Second, the
interviewee may have yielded to a suggestion contained within a false alternative
question (i.e. more than one alternative is suggested) and he or she
fails to give the desired alternative because the question was not structured
to explicitly indicate the wanted alternative answer. The model predicts
that highly suggestible interviewees most readily respond to negative feedback
by changing their answers to false alternative questions as opposed
to closed yes–no answer questions because their response alternatives are
more limited. The reason for this is that an individual who has yielded to
nearly all of the yes–no type questions during interrogation is reaching a
‘ceiling effect’ in terms of suggestibility. Since false alternative questions
give people more than one suggestible option it would be easier for them to
alter their answers to these questions than yes–no type questions and still
remain highly suggestible in terms of affirmative answers.
IMPLICATIONS OF THE MODEL AND HYPOTHESES
The best way of evaluating the merit of a theory is by finding out how well hypotheses
derived from the theory are supported by empirical findings. A number
of hypotheses can be predicted from the model and to what extent these
have been supported will be discussed in the next chapter. Some of the main
hypotheses derived from the model are as follows.
1. Implicit in the model is the assumption that interrogative suggestibility is
a distinct type of suggestibility. In particular, it would not be expected to
correlate with primary suggestibility as found in a hypnotic context.
2. The model views suggestibility as a dynamic process that is potentially
situation bound. This is particularly true of negative feedback, whose impact
is expected to vary according to the intensity, quality and nature of