Daniel J. Gurney

A Nod in the Wrong Direction: Does Non-verbal Feedback Affect Eyewitness Confidence in Interviews?

Eyewitnesses can be influenced by an interviewers behaviour and report information with inflated confidence as a result. Previous research has shown that positive feedback administered verbally can affect the confidence attributed to testimony, but the effect of non-verbal influence in interviews has been given little attention. This study investigated whether positive or negative non-verbal feedback could affect the confidence witnesses attribute to their responses. Participants witnessed staged CCTV footage of a crime scene and answered 20 questions in a structured interview, during which they were given either positive feedback (a head nod), negative feedback (a head shake) or no feedback. Those presented with positive non-verbal feedback reported inflated confidence compared with those presented with negative non-verbal feedback regardless of accuracy, and this effect was most apparent when participants reported awareness of the feedback. These results provide further insight into the effects of interviewer behaviour in investigative interviews.

What's Left Unsaid: How Nonverbal Influence Compares with Verbal Influence

Eyewitnesses’ memory reports can be altered when ambiguous post-event information is presented verbally during interviews. Although recent research has identified that gestures can also act as a source of influence in eyewitness interviews, it is unknown whether nonverbal suggestions can exert an influence to the same extent as those made verbally. To investigate this, 92 adults were interviewed about a crime video and provided with either verbal (speech) or nonverbal (gesture) suggestions during questioning that provided either factual or misleading information about the scene. The results revealed that both differed from controls, and that gestures exerted a similar level of influence as speech. As with speech, gestures led participants to giving both correct and incorrect responses. These results highlight that misinformation can be conveyed covertly through gestures as a form of suggestion in a way that is comparable to overt verbal influence.

Dressing up posture: The interactive effects of posture and clothing on competency judgements

Individuals often receive judgements from others based on their clothing and their posture. While both of these factors have been found to influence judgements of competency independently, their relative importance in impression formation is yet to be investigated. We address this by examining interactive effects of posture and clothing on four competency measures: confidence, professionalism, approachability, and likeliness of a high salary. Participants rated photographs of both male and female models pictured in different postures (strong, neutral, weak) in smart clothing (a suit for males; both a trouser suit and skirt suit for females) and casual clothing. We confirm that posture manipulations affected judgements of individuals differently according to the clothing they were pictured in. The nature of these interactions varied by gender and, for women, competency judgements differed according to attire type (trouser or skirt suit). The implications of these findings in relation to impression formation are discussed.

The Saliency of Gestural Misinformation in the Perception of a Violent Crime

ABSTRACT Recent research has revealed that misinformation from gestures can influence eyewitness memory. However, it is still unclear whether gestural misinformation can emulate the effects of verbal misinformation on the reporting of major details in serious crimes. To investigate the salience of suggestions provided nonverbally, and how these compare to those made verbally, two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, participants watched footage of a crime scene and were presented with one of two types of gestures during questioning that suggested different interpretations of the crime. The results confirmed that the gestures influenced responses, with participants altering their interpretation of the crime according to the information gestured to them. Experiment 2 built on this to investigate how comparable gestural influence was to verbal influence. The results revealed that gestural misinformation caused participants to alter their interpretation of the crime and elicited the same effects as verbal misinformation. Across the two experiments, participants were unlikely to identify the misleading gestures or report feeling misled by them. These results reveal new insights into the strength of gestural misinformation and show that, despite their subtle nature in communication, gestures can exert a powerful influence in eyewitness interviews.