Building Trust to Enhance Elicitation

Abstract

Drawing on the scientific literature on trust and the experiences of distinguished interviewers, two primary trust-building tactics with potential application in investigative and intelligence interviewing were identified and assessed for their efficacy in this context. Trust-building tactics that demonstrate trustworthiness and demonstrate a willingness to trust portray the interviewer as reliable and dependable (i.e., perceptions of cognitive trust) as well as convey goodwill and warmth (i.e., perceptions of affective trust) were viewed as likely to increase a source’s willingness to disclose critical information. Across three experiments, both tactics were found to be influential in engaging the reciprocity principle in a manner that elicited the sources’ cooperation and enhanced information yield. However, perceptions of cognitive trust were found to function as a direct encouragement to reveal information. In contrast, perceptions of affective trust first facilitated a willingness to cooperate that had the potential for subsequently manifesting as an instrumental form of cooperation.