What does it feel like to be inside a police interrogation room, and what can that experience tell us about perceptions of coercion?
New research from Hayley Cleary, a professor of criminal justice and public policy in the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University, uses virtual reality to explore those questions.
In a new open-access study published in Applied Cognitive Psychology, “What Constitutes ‘Gross’ Coercion? Perceived Coercion in Police Interrogations Using a Virtual Reality Paradigm”, Cleary and coauthor L.A. Guarnera examine how people perceive coercion during a police interrogation.
The article is the second to emerge from Cleary’s Virtual Interrogation Subjective Experience (VISE) project, which uses immersive virtual reality to study perceptions and experiences of police interrogation.
For the study, the researchers created a realistic interrogation scripted from an actual case and filmed in 360-degree video in an interrogation room. Wearing a VR headset, participants found themselves seated alongside a young suspect being questioned about a homicide.
The researchers found that participants’ expectations of leniency decreased over time, while negative emotions and perceptions that the suspect’s autonomy was constrained quickly reached very high levels. Surprisingly few individual characteristics predicted perceptions of coercion; the significant predictors were related to trauma history and symptoms.
The findings build on Cleary’s earlier VISE research examining perceptions of police custody. Cleary says the results support what theories of social influence and real-world cases have long suggested: simply being inside an interrogation room can be a powerful driver of perceptions.
The work also addresses questions that arise in the legal system. Judges across the country are asked to rule on the voluntariness of confessions with limited information about what it actually feels like to be inside an interrogation room. Cleary and Guarnera hope their research can help inform those consequential decisions.
The research is continuing. Cleary and her collaborators recently filmed VISE 2.0 in partnership with a local police department. Supported by Cleary’s National Science Foundation grant, the expanded project will allow the researchers to test new questions and collect additional data, including participants’ biophysiological responses to the virtual interrogation.
The original VISE pilot project was supported by a VCU Quest grant and produced in collaboration with colleagues from the VCU School of the Arts and VCU alumni.
Read the open-access study in Applied Cognitive Psychology.
