Social Judgments of Rapport in Investigative Interviews Across Cultures

Abstract

Rapport is a fundamental psychological construct and understanding it conceptually, including how it is perceived in social interactions, may have a crucial impact on human relations. Culture may be a key that can disentangle and elucidate dynamic characteristics about the nature of rapport as culture provides different and unique meaning systems. We examined cultural similarities and differences in social perceptions of rapport in a context in which interactants had different cultural/ethnic backgrounds. Observers from three very different culture/language groups rated their perceptions about the quality of rapport along 11 conceptually theorized rapport dimensions in video clips presenting one-on-one interviews that differed in their rapport levels. The observer ratings reduced to the same two dimensions across all observer groups, Positivity and Negativity, and there were considerable cultural similarities, along with some differences, in perceptions of rapport across videos. We discussed these findings concerning future theory and research on rapport in various contexts.