Personality factors, interview competencies and communicative suspiciousness of Canadian police interrogators of criminal suspects

The interrogation of suspects in a criminal investigation is a prosecution’s most potent weapon and it is sometimes the best available evidence. Identifying the profile of an effective interrogator may improve interview performance. Data concerning personality dimensions, interviewing competencies, and communicative suspicion, a form of cognitive bias, were collected from police interrogators employed with medium and large police forces across Canada. The study confirmed the relations between several Police Interview competencies and traits from the Five Factor Model previously reported by DeFruyt, Bockstaele, Taris and Van Hiel (2006) and Smets (2009). General Communicative Suspicion (Levine and McCornack, 1991) was negatively related to many of the competencies and personality factors thought to be good indices of job performance. Results are discussed in light of the importance of evaluating the roles played by personality, competencies and cognitive biases in the context of police interrogations.