Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

Suggestibility: Empirical Findings 379
Acquiescence is probably best construed as predominantly comprising intellectual
and educational components rather than temperament or personality
variables. This interpretation is consistent with the finding that highly acquiescent
individuals tend to come from poorer educational backgrounds (Ware,
1978) and often have a history of learning disability (Sigelman et al., 1981).
There is also evidence that acquiescence is related to a cognitive style rather
than being a feature of personality (Knowles & Nathan, 1997).
Compliance, on the other hand, is best construed as a personality measure.
Suggestibility probably falls in between the other two measures, but it is clearly
more akin to compliance than acquiescence.
In one study (Gudjonsson, 1990b), comprising 55 subjects who had completed
the GCS and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-R), there was a small
but significant negative correlation between compliance and Full Scale IQ (r =
−0.29, p < 0.05). In contrast, both acquiescence and suggestibility have been
found to have modest negative correlations with intelligence (the correlations
with Full Scale IQ were −0.53 and −0.44, p < 0.001, respectively). Factor analysis
(Varimax rotation) of the WAIS-R subtests, the GSS 1 Total Suggestibility
score, the GCS score and acquiescence revealed three main factors. These factors
are best construed as verbal intelligence, non-verbal intelligence and compliance.
Acquiescence had clear loading on the first two factors, whereas suggestibility
and compliance loaded highly on the third factor (−0.67 and −0.81
respectively). Compliance had particularly low loadings on the two intelligence
factors.
SUGGESTIBILITY AND GENDER
With regard to the GSS 1, there seems to be some general tendency for females
to score slightly higher on suggestibility than males, but the difference, which
is about one point for Total Suggestibility, has not been found to be significant
(Gudjonsson, 1984a; Gudjonsson & Lister, 1984). In one study employing
the GSS 2 (Danielsdottir, Sigurgeirsdottir, Einarsdottir & Haraldsson, 1993),
eight-year-old boys obtained significantly higher Shift scores than girls, but no
significant difference was found for three other age groups (6, 10 and 12).
In an American doctorate dissertation, Redlich (1999) found that among
young persons (12 to 26-year-olds), males were significantly more suggestible
than females with regard to GSS Yield 1, Yield 2 and Total Suggestibility. Some
of this gender difference may have been due to the significantly higher immediate
recall scores of the female participants.
Powers, Andriks and Loftus (1979) found that female subjects were significantly
more suggestible than male subjects. An interesting finding was that sex
differences in accuracy were related to the type of information a question was
aimed at. Women were significantly more accurate than men on questions dealing
with female-oriented details (e.g. women’s clothing and actions), whereas
men were more accurate with regard to male-oriented details (e.g. the thief’s
appearance and offence’s surroundings).
The authors conclude that males and females tend to be accurate on different
items, which suggests that each sex pays more attention to those items which