Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

376 A Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions
The feeling of guilt is undoubtedly one of the most important factors that
increase the individual’s likelihood of complying with a request. Freedman,
Wallington and Bless (1967) manipulated guilt feelings in two different ways
in three studies. In all studies there was a marked increase in subsequent
compliance. The authors put forward two possible mechanisms for this. Firstly,
complying with a request after experimental guilt manipulation helps the individual
expiate the guilt by doing something ‘good’ to compensate for what he or
she had done ‘wrong’ previously. Konoske, Staple and Graf (1979) construe this
as subjects’ attempt to restore their lowered self-esteem. Secondly, compliance
may be a way of punishing oneself for the action that caused the guilt feeling
in the first place.
Another important finding in the Freedman–Wallington–Bless study is that
guilt may strongly motivate people to avoid being confronted with the person
they have allegedly harmed. Therefore, there appear to be two conflicting
motivations as a result of guilt: people are motivated to engage in altruistic
behaviour as a way of alleviating guilt feelings and restoring self-esteem, but
there is a strong tendency towards avoidance behaviour when this means actually
meeting the person allegedly harmed. The implication is that guilt feeling
manipulation is most effective in increasing compliant behaviour when the
subject does not subsequently have to be confronted with the victim. This is,
however, unlikely to be a problem when the subject is already interacting with
the victim. The most likely explanation is that subjects are too embarrassed to
‘face’ the victim. This highlights the importance of feelings of shame, as well
as feelings of guilt, in influencing avoidance behaviour when being confronted
with wrongdoings.
One of the most important findings with regard to guilt manipulation research,
is that once guilt is induced in the subject, it can be directed into greater
compliance with requests that are completely unrelated to the original source
of guilt. This has important implications for police interrogation, because guilt
induction is recommended in manuals on police interrogation.
Few studies have looked at the types of situational factor that reduce compliance.
The most important one appears to be anger (Milberg & Clark, 1988),
which will be discussed in detail later in this chapter.
The role of cultural factors has not been specifically studied in relation to
suggestibility and compliance, but it has been shown to be relevant to conformity
studies (Bond & Smith, 1996). In their meta-analysis study, Bond and
Smith found that conformity was higher in collectivist than individualist cultures.
In addition, differences in the degree of conformity may change over
time within a culture, as demonstrated by the decline in conformity in the
USA since Asch’s conformity research began in the early 1950s (Bond & Smith,
1996).
ACQUIESCENCE
Acquiescence refers to the tendency of an individual to answer questions in
the affirmative irrespective of the content (Cronbach, 1946). It shares with