Are you talking to me? Influencing behaviour and culture in police interviews

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between two types of influencing behaviour in police interviews (being kind and rational persuasion) and three types of interview effectiveness, i.e. the suspects’ willingness to give a statement, their estimation of the quality of the relationship with the detective, and suspects’ admission. We expected that being kind and rational persuasion (arguments referring to logic and rationality) would have a different effect on suspects from cultures that tend to be direct and content-oriented (low-context cultures) versus cultures in which communication is more indirect and context orientated (high-context cultures). To examine this, experienced police detectives interviewed mock theft suspects from low-context (n=25) and high-context (n=27) cultures. As predicted, and particularly for high-context suspects, being kind in terms of rewarding and offering was positively related to the perceived quality of the relationship of the suspect, while being kind in terms of active listening behaviour was positively related to admissions. Furthermore, and as expected, there was a positive relationship between rational persuasion of the police detective and admissions for low-context suspects, but also a negative relationship between rational persuasion and admissions for high-context suspects.     

Urgent issues and prospects at the intersection of culture,memory, and witness interviews: Exploring the challenges for research and practice

The pursuit of justice increasingly relies on productive interactions between witnesses and investigators from diverse cultural backgrounds during investigative interviews. To date, the role of cultural context has largely been ignored by researchers in the field of investigative interviewing, despite repeated requests from practitioners and policymakers for evidence-based guidance for the conduct of interviews with people from different cultures. Through examining cultural differences in human memory and communication and considering specific contextual challenges for investigative interviewing through the lens of culture, this review and associated commentaries highlight the scope for considering culture and human diversity in research on, and the practice of, investigative interviewing with victims, witnesses, and other sources. Across 11 commentaries, contributors highlight the importance of considering the role of culture in different investigative interviewing practices (e.g., rapport building, questioning techniques) and contexts (e.g., gender-based violence, asylum seeking, child abuse), address common areas of cultural mismatch between interviewer–interviewee expectations, and identify critical future routes for research. We call for an increased focus in the investigative interviewing literature on the nature and needs of our global community and encourage constructive and collaborative discussion between researchers and practitioners from around the world to better identify specific challenges and work together towards evidence-based solutions.     

Depressive Symptoms in Low-Income,Urban Adolescents: Cognitive and Contextual Factors

This study examined the relationships among cognitive variables, family immigration history, negative life events, and depressive symptoms in a sample of 306 low-income, urban fifth- and sixth-grade children. Explanatory style and negative automatic thoughts were the cognitive variables examined. There were three key findings. First, children who were immigrants reported significantly more depressive symptoms, more negative life events, and more negative automatic thoughts than children who were not immigrants. Second, both explanatory style and negative automatic thoughts were significantly associated with depressive symptoms above and beyond the effects of child immigration history and negative life events. Finally, negative automatic thoughts mediated the relationship between child immigration history and depressive symptoms. We discuss the clinical and research implications of these findings.     

Butches and nomads: The dynamic imperative in feminist theory

Abstract

In this essay, a critique on the blatant dynamic imperative in contemporary feminist theory is presented. In Judith Butler's Gender Trouble (1990) and Rosi Braidotti's Nomadic Subjects (1994), the theoreticians project a feminist subject of heroic proportions: dynamic, active and subversive. Theoretically, this dynamism can be traced back to Nietzsche's tragic thinking. But what has become of Nietzsche's meditation on death, decay and destruction as necessary preconditions for any creative thinking? By insisting on frantic activity as a strategy to effect sexual difference, Butler and Braidotti have foreclosed the possibility for passivity, receptivity and silence as alternative strategies to think this crucial question.     

‘An Unexpected Recruit to Feminism’: Jessie Boucherett’s ‘Feminist Life’ and the importance of being wealthy

In 1859 Jessie Boucherett, the daughter of a Lincolnshire landowner possessed of an independent income, was inspired by press discussions of the need to find alternative occupations for women to make contact with the women who were already spreading this message through the English Woman’s Journal. With their rather grudging support she founded a society, which still exists, to further this aim, the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women (now the Society for Promoting the Training of Women). Using the records of this Society, now housed at Girton College, Cambridge, this article looks at the way commitment to this cause allowed a woman from a wealthy, high Tory, landed background to turn herself in six years into the feminist who put up the initial money for the women’s suffrage campaign, and went on to be a leading figure in campaigns to reform the married women’s property laws and against legislation restricting women’s work. It examines in particular the use she made of her personal wealth to direct the strategies of the activist groups to which she belonged.     

Eileen Power's Asian journey, 1920-21: history,narrative, and subjectivity

Abstract

This article analyses the travel writings of the British medieval historian, Eileen Power (1889-1940), during her year-long journey around the world in 1920-21 as the first and only female awarded a travel fellowship administered by the Trustees of the University of London in the years following the First World War. Drawing upon a comparative reading of her official Report to the Trustees and her private diary record of her ‘Tour du Monde’, we examine the various dimensions of subjectivity and identity evident in her narrative of the journey, interrogating the difference which gender makes in the relationship of European travellers to empire. In addition, we examine how the narrative of her journey and subsequent historical narratives were part of those Orientalist forces/discourses which produced and were produced by the West's relationship to the East in the first half of the twentieth century.