Abstract
Building rapport during police interviews is argued as important for improving on the completeness and accuracy of information provided by witnesses and victims. However, little experimental research has clearly operationalised rapport and investigated the impact of rapport behaviours on episodic memory. Eighty adults watched a video of a mock crime event and 24-hours later were randomly allocated to an interview condition where verbal and/or behavioural (non-verbal) rapport techniques were manipulated. Memorial performance measures revealed significantly more correct information, without a concomitant increase in errors, was elicited when behavioural rapport was present, a superiority effect found in both the free and probed recall phase of interviews. The presence of verbal rapport was found to reduce recall accuracy in the free recall phase of interviews. Post-interview feedback revealed significant multivariate effects for the presence of behavioural (only) rapport and combined (behavioural + verbal) rapport. Participants rated their interview experience far more positively when these types of rapport were present compared to when verbal (only) rapport or no rapport was present. These findings add weight to the importance of rapport in supporting eyewitness cognition, highlighting the potential consequences of impoverished social behaviours for building rapport during dyadic interactions, suggesting ‘doing’ rather than simply ‘saying’ may be more beneficial.
Highlights
There is widespread agreement that rapport building is an effective skill for improving interpersonal communication [1,2,3,4]
The empirical literature is dominated by post-hoc investigations of rapport building by accessing recordings or transcripts of real life interviews with witnesses and persons of interest [11, 22, 25, 26, 28, 36, 37], with relatively little attention paid to the impact of rapport behaviours on episodic memory performance
Our findings revealed that verbal rapport building alone had a negative impact on the accuracy of the information recalled, which dropped significantly in the initial free recall phase, and post-interview feedback indicates that verbalisations alone were poorly received
Summary
There is widespread agreement that rapport building is an effective skill for improving interpersonal communication [1,2,3,4]. In therapeutic settings rapport can support the development of positive relationships, resulting in improved goal outcomes (e.g., curbing maladaptive behaviours [5,6,7,8]). Rapport between employees and customers is known to improve satisfaction and customer loyalty [9]. Rapport has been found to enhance understanding of cognitive goals which supports learners to feel more comfortable, allowing them to target cognitive resources on learning [10].
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