Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

Suggestibility: Empirical Findings 413
to which people give in to misleading questions, whereas Shift is more a measure
of how people respond to interrogative pressure, which links it particularly
to anxiety and coping processes. Shift seems more akin to the concept of compliance
than Yield 1, because people are making a conscious decision to alter
their answers in an attempt to improve their performance. Shift is less stable
as a measure than Yield 1 and it is more susceptible to an experimenter effect.
However, both Yield 1 and Shift have been shown to be fairly stable over
time and are valid measures of interrogative suggestibility. Yield 2 is emerging,
in its own right, as an important measure of psychological vulnerability.
It should be incorporated routinely into the clinical, forensic and research applications
of the scales. The most impressive findings relate to the ability of
the scales to differentiate between defendants who allege that they made a
false confession and those who made no self-incriminating admissions during
police interrogation, and the finding that the GSS 1 differentiated successfully
between coerced–internalized and other type of false confessor.
The GSS 1 and the GSS 2 have been used to test a number of hypotheses
raised by the Gudjonsson–Clark (1986) theoretical model of interrogative suggestibility.
A number of studies have supported hypotheses derived from the
model. Interrogative suggestibility is apparently distinct from that found in
a hypnotic context, although there is some recent evidence to suggest a certain
overlap between the two types of suggestibility. Interrogative suggestibility
correlates with a number of cognitive and personality measures, including
those measuring intellectual functioning, memory, self-esteem, anxiety, assertiveness,
locus of control and field dependence. Of particular importance
seems to be the ability of the person to cope with the demands, expectations
and pressures of the interrogative situation.
Yield 1 and Shift are distinct and reasonably independent types of suggestibility.
They are both mediated by similar factors, such as cognitive variables
(memory, intelligence), anxiety, social factors and coping skills. However,
there is growing evidence that Yield 1 is relatively more related to cognitive
variables, whereas Shift is relatively more related to interpersonal and social
factors. Yield 2 is best construed as combination of Yield 1 and Shift and may
therefore at times give the best overall picture of vulnerability. However, there
are problems with the measurement of Yield 2 when subjects score at the top of
the scale on Yield 1 (i.e. due to ceiling effect), as commonly happens with adults
with learning disabilities.
Suggestibility is, to a certain extent, influenced by situational factors and experience.
Mood variables, such as anger and suspiciousness, have been shown
to markedly reduce peoples’ susceptibility to suggestions and their willingness
to comply with requests. Sleep deprivation is associated with increased suggestibility,
particularly Shift. The type and nature of instructions given prior to
the interrogation, such as those related to expectations about performance, can
also influence suggestibility in a given situation. Warning people prior to testing
that the questions may be misleading does reduce the tendency of people
to give in to leading questions. The manner in which the scales are administered,
and particularly how the negative feedback procedure is carried out,
does influence the scores. For these reasons it is important that the scales are