Skill in Interviewing Reduces Confirmation Bias

Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling

Volumn 9, Issue 2, 2012, Pages 126-134

  Powell, Martine B ^a   Hughes Scholes, Carolyn H ^a   Sharman, Stefanie J ^a  

^a DEAKIN UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

Confirmation bias; Investigative interview

Indexed keywords

EID: 84862013391     PISSN: 15444759     EISSN: 15444767     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/jip.1357     Document Type: Article

References (34)

1. Aarons, N. M., Powell, M. B., & Browne, J. (2004). Police perceptions of interviews involving children with intellectual disabilities: A qualitative inquiry. Policing and Society, 14, 269-278.
2. Ask, K., & Granhag, P. A. (2005). Motivational sources of confirmation bias in criminal investigations: The need for cognitive closure. Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, 2, 43-63.
3. Ask, K., & Granhag, P. A. (2007). Motivational bias in criminal investigators' judgments of witness reliability. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 37, 561-591.
4. Ceci, S. J., & Bruck, M. (1995). The role of interviewer bias. In S. J. Ceci, & M. Bruck, Jeopardy in the courtroom: A scientific analysis of children's testimony (pp. 87-108). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
5. Chen, M., & Bargh, J. A. (1997). Nonconscious behavioral confirmation processes: The self-fulfilling consequences of automatic stereotype activation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 33, 541-560.
6. Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
7. Dent, H. R., & Stephenson, G. M. (1979). An experimental study of the effectiveness of different techniques of questioning child witnesses. The British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 18, 41-51.
8. Eastwood, C., & Patton, W. (2002). The experiences of child complainants of sexual abuse in the criminal justice system. Retrieved August 17, 2011, from
9. Feltis, B. B., Powell, M. B., Snow, P. C., & Hughes-Scholes, C. H. (2010). An examination of the association between interviewer question type and story-grammar detail in child witness interviews about abuse. Child Abuse & Neglect, 34, 407-413.
10. Hershkowitz, I., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., & Esplin, P. W. (1997). The relationship among interviewer utterance type, CBCA scores and the richness of children's responses. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 2, 169-72.
11. Hughes-Scholes, C. H., & Powell, M. B. (2008). An examination of the types of leading questions used by investigative interviewers of children. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, 31, 210-225.
12. Innes, M. (2002). The "process structures" of police homicide investigations. British Journal of Criminology, 42, 669-688.
13. Lamb, M. E., Hershkowitz, I., Orbach, Y., & Esplin, P. W. (2008). Tell me what happened: Structured investigative interviews of child victims and witnesses. The psychology of crime, policing and law. NJ: Wiley.
14. Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., & Esplin, P. W. (2000). Effects of age and delay on the amount of information provided by alleged sex abuse victims in investigative interviews. Child Development, 71, 1586-96.
15. Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Orbach, Y., Esplin, P. W., & Mitchell, S. (2002). Is ongoing feedback necessary to maintain the quality of investigative interviews with allegedly abused children? Applied Developmental Science, 6, 35-41.
16. Melinder, A., & Gilstrap, L. L. (2009). The relationships between child and forensic interviewer behaviours and individual differences in interviews about a medical examination. The European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 6, 365-395.
17. Mortimer, A., & Shepherd, E. (1999). Frames of mind: Schemata guiding cognition and conduct in the interviewing of suspected offenders. In A. Memon, & R. Bull (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of interviewing (pp. 293-315). Chichester, UK: Wiley.
18. Nickerson, R. S. (1998). Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology, 2, 175-220.
19. Orbach, Y., & Lamb, M. E. (2007). Young children's references to temporal attributes of allegedly experienced events in the course of forensic interviews. Child Development, 78, 1100-1120.
20. Orbach, Y., Hershkowitz, I., Lamb, M. E., Sternberg, K. J., Esplin, P. W., & Horowitz, D. (2000). Assessing the value of structured protocols for forensic interviews of alleged child abuse victims. Child Abuse & Neglect, 24, 733-52.
21. Powell, M. B., & Snow, P. C. (2007). Guide to questioning children during the free-narrative phase of an investigative interview. Australian Psychologist, 42, 57-65.
22. Powell, M. B., & Wright, R. (2008). Investigative interviewers' perceptions of the value of different training tasks on their adherence to open-ended questions with children. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 15, 272-283.
23. Powell, M. B., & Wright, R. (2009). Professionals' perceptions of electronically recorded interviews with vulnerable witnesses, Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 21, 205-218.
24. Powell, M. B., Cavezza, C., Hughes-Scholes, C., & Stoove, M. (2010). Examination of the consistency of interviewer performance across three distinct interview contexts. Psychology, Crime & Law, 16, 585-600.
25. Powell, M. B., Fisher, R. P., & Hughes-Scholes, C. H. (2008). The effect of using trained versus untrained adult respondents in simulated practice interviews about child abuse. Child Abuse & Neglect, 32, 1007-1016.
26. Powell, M. B., Garry, M., & Brewer, N. D. (2009). Eyewitness testimony. In I. Freckelton and H. Selby (Eds.), Expert Evidence (pp. 1-42). Sydney, NSW: Thompson Reuters.
27. Powell, M. B., Hughes-Scholes, C. H., Cavezza, C., & Stoove, M. A. (2010). Examination of the stability and consistency of investigative interviewer performance across similar mock interview contexts. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 15, 243-260.
28. Powell, M. B., Wright, R., & Clark, S. (2010). Improving the competency of police officers in conducting investigative interviews of children. Police Practice and Research, 11, 211-226.
29. Roberts, K. P., Lamb, M. E., & Sternberg, K. J. (2004). The effects of rapport-building style on children's reports of a staged event. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 18, 189-202.
30. Schneider, W., & Chein, J. (2003). Controlled and automatic processing: Behavior, theory, and biological mechanisms. Cognitive Science, 27, 525-559.
31. Schneider, W., & Shiffrin, R. M. (1977). Controlled and automatic human information processing: 1. Detection, search, and attention. Psychological Review, 84, 1-66.
32. Sternberg, K. J., Lamb, M. E., Hershkowitz, I., Esplin, P. W., Redlich, A., & Sunshine, N. (1996). The relationship between investigative utterance types and the informativeness of child witnesses. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 17, 439-451.
33. White, T. L., Leichtman, M. D., & Ceci, S. J. (1997). The good, the bad, and the ugly: Accuracy, inaccuracy, and elaboration in preschoolers' reports about a past event. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 11, 37-54.
34. Wilson, C., & Powell, M. B. (2001). A guide to interviewing children: Essential skills for counsellors, police, lawyers and social workers. Australia: Allen & Unwin.