Behaviour Analysis Interview and Common Sense: A Study with Novice and Experienced Officers

Abstract

[EN]The Behaviour Analysis Interview (BAI) is an interview protocol designed to generate different reactions in guilty and innocent suspects. Masip et al. (in press) found that students had the same views about the guilt or innocence indicators of the BAI as the BAI proponents. This suggests that training in the BAI may only reinforce the trainees’ pre-existing beliefs. However, the typical BAI trainees are not students, but law enforcement personnel. In this study, Masip et al.’s questionnaire was administered to novice and experienced officers. Results revealed that the officers share the BAI proponents’ assumptions to the same extent as Masip et al.’s student sample. Averaging across all three samples, support was found for the prediction that the BAI notions are just common sense for all of the BAI questions but one. A marginal trend emerged for veteran officers with interviewing experience to assign more guilt to the suspects’ reactions than their peers without such experience.