Abstract
This study proposed that criminal guilt interacts with dominance and interview question to affect linguistic properties during criminal interviews. A field experiment tested effects of criminal guilt, dominance, and question on linguistic properties of suspects' responses using a 2 (criminal guilt: guilty/innocent) × 4 (question: Q1/Q2/Q3/Q4) mixed-model design with dominance as a covariate and question as a repeated factor. Analysis of linguistic properties from 37 criminal interviews indicated a hypothesized two-way interaction among dominance and guilt on immediacy and a three-way interaction among dominance, question, and guilt on complexity explored as part of the research question. Several other direct effects for dominance and question were noted. Implications, limitations, and future research directions are discussed.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 357-375 |
| Number of pages | 19 |
| Journal | Journal of Language and Social Psychology |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 2011 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count
- criminal interview
- deception
- dominance
- linguistic analysis
- question
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Social Psychology
- Education
- Language and Linguistics
- Anthropology
- Sociology and Political Science
- Linguistics and Language