A growing body of research suggests that empathy plays a major role in establishing and maintaining rapport during police interviews. The benefits of rapport include not only increased cooperation from interviewees, but also gaining more... more
A growing body of research suggests that empathy plays a major role in establishing and maintaining rapport during police interviews. The benefits of rapport include not only increased cooperation from interviewees, but also gaining more accurate investigation relevant information. However, there still is no universally agreed-upon definition and very little research on operationalizing empathy, especially within investigative interviewing. The present study analyzed police interviewers’ self-reports regarding their (a) training and methods employed during interviews, (b) application of empathy in interviews, and (c) definitions/understanding of empathy. It was found that officers in all seven participating countries varied within each country in their use of accusatory or information-gathering interview styles. The majority of participants in each country claimed to employ empathy in their interviews with suspects, yet they varied regarding the definitions they provided. In no country was empathy defined as having aspects that may not be conducive to investigative interviewing.
Empathy in investigative interviews has increasingly become a focus in the recent literature on investigative interviewing as its implementation may aid in building and maintaining rapport. Displaying empathy in interviews is claimed to... more
Empathy in investigative interviews has increasingly become a focus in the recent literature on investigative interviewing as its implementation may aid in building and maintaining rapport. Displaying empathy in interviews is claimed to have positive impacts on the provision of investigation relevant information. However, the literature currently omits practically operationalizing empathy, which would provide a means of implementing it effectively in investigative interviews. As such, the present study examines empathic displays by interviewers employed in interviews with suspects of high‑risk crimes such as sexual offences in order to see what types are applied as a step towards identifying and possibly defining/operationalizing empathy during investigative interviews in the future.
Nineteen audio‑tapes of police interviews with suspects of sexual crimes in England and Wales conducted by experienced police interviewers were coded for their empathic displays and suspects’ level of information provision throughout the interviews. Five different types of empathy were found to be employed. Interviews that had higher levels of suspect information provision involved all five types of investigative empathy, whereas interviews in which fewer types of empathy were displayed offered less or no information. Thus, the use of investigative empathy in investigative
