Investigators under influence: How social norms activate goal-directed processing of criminal evidence

Abstract

Summary: Previous research has shown that exposure to social information can influence behaviour through the automatic activation of goals. In the first study to examine such influences in a legal setting, an experiment with 104 experienced criminal investigators tested the idea that exposure to occupational norms can activate distinct information-processing goals. As predicted, exposure to norms associated with efficiency (vs. thoroughness) sped up and reduced the depth of investigators’ processing of criminal evidence, thus reducing their openness to sequentially late witness evidence. In addition, the goal activation operated outside investigators’ awareness, illustrating the insidious cognitive influence of occupational norms. The results are discussed in terms of practical significance and contributions to the goal activation literature and the applied study of criminal investigations. Copyright # 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. It has long been recognised that human behaviour is largely governed by goals, and that goals can have a direct and powerful influence on cognitive processes (see Moskowitz & Grant, 2009). In the context of criminal investigation, detectives may be motivated by a range of goals, which are not always mutually compatible. For instance, external pressures may motivate an investigator to be efficient and obtain speedy results, and at the same time call for thoroughness and accuracy (Ask & Alison, 2010). The influence of any specific goal on an individual’s behaviour is dependent on goal activation, and recent evidence shows that the social environment is a rich source of goal-activation cues (Chartrand, Dalton, & Cheng, 2008). In this article, we test the consequent prediction that police investigators, when exposed to normative expressions by peers, will unconsciously adopt the goals implied by those norms. Specifically, we examine whether the social activation of goals to achieve efficiency or thoroughness affects investigators’ processing and judgments of criminal evidence.