Study: Kindness Key To Successful Interrogation
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Forget torture, bright lights, waterboarding, and screaming cops. If you need to extract useful information from someone, the best approach may be kindness, according to new research out of Sweden.
Specifically, researchers compared a common, “direct” interrogation—where the questions are direct and specific—to the Scharff Technique, named after the highly successful German interrogator Hanns Scharff. He once shared his wife’s baked goods and a long stroll with a World War II fighter pilot, reports Pacific Standard magazine; when he claimed that American tracer bullets left a white instead of red smoke due to a chemical shortage, the pilot jumped in to correct him, saying the white smoke was a signal to pilots that they were low on ammo. Thus Scharff was armed with the information he sought. And as the magazine notes, researchers are only now beginning to put his techniques to the test.
In the study, where participants were given a story with 35 details and interrogated by phone, Scharff’s approach not only resulted in more (and more precise) information, but those being interrogated thought they gave up less information than they actually had, while those being interrogated directly felt they gave up more than they actually had.
Kindness is not the only key ingredient to the Scharff Technique; having a “know-it-all” attitude compels information-disclosing corrections, as in the case of the pilot correcting his “friend.” Pacific Standard has more on Scharff, who ended up as a chief interrogator of Allied fighter pilots after an odd series of events.
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Over the years I have used a technique developed by Avinoin Saphir, a former Mossad agent that is based on the belief that interrogations should be approached as interviews with the belief a positive outcome. His theory is ground in psychology and the fact that people actually like to talk and will talk. The key is located in the words they choose to use during their conversations with the interviewer. One starts by giving the interviewee as little information as possible and not allowing the subject to ask questions. The interviewer asks few questions because every question gives the subject information. I have used this successfully in private practice and it has been used by members of the the FBI, Naval Intelligence, and several other government agencies. According to Avonoin people rarely lie, they just do not tell you everything. It works for me.
I used it for years Bill, with great success I might add.
I would kindly ask you to stop trying to kill us all Al Qaida and ISIS.
Polite enough? 😉
These are low life Islamic murderers who need to be punished for their evil misdeeds in the most punishing way.
…but kindly! 😉
It is similar to positive reinforcement being a more effective long-term teaching technique that harassment and threats.
It’s also like the “bad cop/good cop” method with the bad cop left out.
At the extreme, torture is generally useless as people will say anything they think you want to hear to make it stop.