‘What Would You Say if You Were Guilty?’ Suspects' Strategies During a Hypothetical Behavior Analysis Interview Concerning a Serious Crime

Abstract

[EN]Summary: Previous research has shown that the Behavior Analysis Interview (BAI) indicators of guilt or innocence are merely commonsense notions. In this study, we examined whether this would lead suspects of a serious crime to try to manipulate their behavior during a BAI in order to look innocent. A serious crime was described to 74 undergraduates who were asked to imagine that they were guilty or innocent. They then completed a questionnaire about the strategies that they would use during a BAI. Both guilty and innocent suspects were more willing to show the innocence rather than guilt indicators of the BAI. Innocent suspects had a blind faith in the power of innocence to demonstrate that they were not guilty. The general (non-BAI) strategies coincided with those of previous studies; this indicates that prior findings on strategies can be generalized to serious crimes and that strategies can be examined with uncomplicated procedures such as the one used in this study.