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Framing a Reciprocal Interview

What is the impact of offering an interviewee a bottle of water?

This seemingly innocuous question actually delves into major questions both with regard to communication but interviewing techniques more specifically. By looking at this basic question in a recent study, Humintell’s Drs. David Matsumoto and Hyisung Hwang were attempting to look at the notion of reciprocity and whether more reciprocal interviewing tactics contribute to boosting rapport and information gathering.

The subject of reciprocity essentially looks at the idea that people want to return or reciprocate favors offered to them. So, if an interviewee is offered the simple kindness of bottled water, they would be more likely to feel obliged to provide additional information during the course of the interview.

Reciprocity is just one form of what is known as “social influence.” The theoretical literature identifies six principles of social influence that hold across cultures, but this study focuses on reciprocity which had been identified as one of the more powerful and pervasive aspects of social influence.

The study in question divided experimental groups around this simple treatment, offering water to half the participants. They hypothesized that this would boost rapport between interviewer and interviewee and would result in more relevant and plausible information.

These experimental groups were also divided internally between those who were asked to lie and those asked to tell the truth about whether they had stolen a $200 check. The experiment was set up to incentivize participants to lie to their best ability, as they were told that being suspected of deception would result in an extra-long questionnaire after the interview.

Drs. Matsumoto and Hwang found general support for their hypotheses. Liars tended to give more relevant and plausible details after being offered water. Interestingly, neither ethnicity nor culture had an impact. Rapport was also boosted by the reciprocal treatment.

This has significant ramifications for both interviewing tactics and efforts to boost rapport in social situations. When rapport was high, the interrogation proved more fruitful, and reciprocity helped accomplish that! This means that when interviewing an individual, efforts intended to elicit reciprocity may be helpful, even though an actual interview situation is generally a bit higher stakes.

But what does this mean for those of us who are just trying to get better at reading people? Sure, we can offer people we meet bottles of water, but that might be socially out of place! However, the basic principle of reciprocity will hold.

By offering something, be it a compliment, personal information about ourselves, or a gift, we can help create a sense of reciprocity, boosting rapport and better enabling us to know about other people. This is not just some manipulative tactic but also a way of developing better interactions and getting to know people!

Culture and Body Posture

While research into cross-cultural non-verbal communication often focuses on facial expressions, body posture is also an important consideration. This may seem intuitive, as we all have experienced the role that body posture has in communicating emotions, but it has been neglected in most research, at the expense of its valuable potential for effectively reading people.

However, in a pair of studies, Dr. David Matsumoto sought to examine how body posture serves as a different non-verbal cue for people from American or Japanese cultures. While both of these studies date back to the 1980s, the evergreen and often neglected nature of this research merits consideration.

The first of these papers, coauthored with Dr. Tsutomu Kudoh, sought to test conventional wisdom about the role of posture in social situations against the possibility that these were limited only to Western culture. Past research had emphasized the immediacy of a reaction and the level of relaxation shown as the main predictors for how those postures would be understood.

In order to test these theories, Drs. Matsumoto and Kudoh recruited a large sample of Japanese subjects and asked them to develop a list of postures that they had encountered in real life. This resulted in a list of 40 postures which were then rated based on 16 criteria that included confident, respectful, friendly, or calm.

The participants were then instructed to imagine individuals they knew showcasing each of these postures and to rank them based on the aforementioned criteria. This allowed the researchers to assess the role that particular hierarchical roles may have in shaping these evaluations.

In fact, they found that their Japanese participants did evaluate posture in a significantly different way than Western-centric research had found. While Westerners emphasized like or dislike cues, these participants relied on cues rooted in status and power.

In another study with Dr. Kudoh, the researchers further examined the role of cultural norms in interpreting the emotions behind different postures. Given the conclusions of the previous paper, they emphasized that while the United States fosters an individualist culture, Japanese society is more characterized by status.

This paper gathered both American and Japanese students and asked each of these participants to rate the same postures with the same rubric from the last study. Interestingly, none of these postures were unknown to Americans, even though the list was developed by individuals from Japan.

Again, they found that the role of status differed dramatically between cultural groups, as Drs. Matsumoto and Kudoh found that considerations of status impacted social judgments of internal states and interpersonal interactions. They also found considerable variance between evaluations of different attitudes, such as pleasure and dominance.

Not only do these results help expand our understanding of cross-cultural behavior, but they also serve as a caution to avoid expectations that members of other cultures behave in the same way as do members of our own. This has crucial ramifications in attempting to read people, as we explicate in our cross-cultural communication workshops!

Anomalies and Deception Detection

While reading people can help in better communicating, it can also help in determining if somebody is lying to you. It was for this purpose that Humintell’s Dr. David Matsumoto and Dr. Hyi Sung Hwang worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigations to develop a rubric for how to effectively tell if you are being lied to.

Here, they focus on a series of tell-tale indicators, or behavioral anomalies, that give clues into the emotion or motivation of an individual. Law enforcement officials use these to verify statements or attempt to predict possible acts of aggression. While the subtlety of such indicators makes them difficult to detect, it also means that the interviewee does not necessarily know when they have exposed themselves.

One type of indicator consists of verbal cues. For instance, lies tend to omit details, use fewer words, and lack clear or defined structures. This is complicated however, as sometimes detailed descriptions of fictitious accounts are also markers of a lie. They offer an example of when an interviewee gives subtle details about a situation that, according to them, didn’t occur.

Another crucial type of indicator rests in purely non-verbal behavior. These often include excessive blinking, certain gestures, and fleeting microexpressions.  For example, when an interviewee is trying to conceal fear, their eyes might flash suddenly, revealing the white above the iris.

While we distinguish these two types, they are deeply interwoven, and a successful interviewer must keep both considerations in mind.

It is also important to expand on the term “anomaly.” While many people think that lying behavior is just universally evident, this is not always the case. Instead, a skilled interviewer must try to learn as much as they can about the person’s underlying personality. It is when people notably deviate from their baseline behavior that deception indicators are most apparent.

We also have to clarify that many so-called experts in deception detection emphasize indicators that have not been supported by empirical evidence. These often focus on eye contact, arguing that a failure to look an interviewer straight in the eye is a sign of deception. Numerous studies have disproven this persistent claim, so it is important not to let this sway your assessments.

While we would love to just list out everything to look for, these indicators are often either incredibly subtle or context-dependent.  After working closely with law enforcement to train them in these detection techniques, however, Dr. Matsumoto reported a dramatic increase in accuracy, from 10 to 25 percent!

Thankfully, these techniques are not limited to high-level law enforcement. While Humintell is proud to work with all sorts of agencies, we are also thrilled to work with people like you. We offer both a comprehensive class in evaluating truthfulness and a course in predicting possible signs of aggression that can help translate these ideas into making you the best people reader and deception detector possible.