Jacqueline R. Evans

Florida International University | FIU · Department of Psychology

The discovery of many cases of wrongful conviction in the criminal justice system involving admissions from innocent suspects has led psychologists to examine the factors contributing to false confessions. However, little systematic research has assessed the processes underlying Human Intelligence (HUMINT) interrogations relating to military and in...

The ability to detect deception is critical in criminal and investigative contexts. Society continues to become more diverse as international travel becomes more commonplace; as such, it has never been so essential to understand the potential impact of speakers’ language proficiency on assessing their credibility. Recently, deception researchers ha...

Although memory deteriorates over time, people may be able to maintain high accuracy by metacognitively monitoring the quality of their memories and strategically controlling their memory reports. We test two mechanisms of metacognitive control: Exercising a report option (withholding uncertain responses) and adjusting response precision (providing...

Substantial research has assessed interrogations seeking to obtain a criminal confession, and consequently much has been learned regarding the potential problems with confession evidence. However, an increasing focus on counter-terrorism, and therefore intelligence interrogations, reveals an obvious gap in the literature. Intelligence interrogation...

According to law enforcement, many witnesses are intoxicated either at the time of the crime, the interview, or both (Evans et al., Public Policy Law 15(3):194-221, 2009). However, no study to date has examined whether intoxicated witnesses' recall is different from sober witnesses' and whether they are more vulnerable to misinformation using an ec...

Rapport building is a widely recommended investigative technique that sometimes improves eyewitness recall. However, a clear understanding of how rapport impacts witness recall is lacking. We explored benevolence as a mediator between rapport and eyewitness recall while fixing the pre‐interview interaction to 3 min. Further, we explored whether rap...

Forensic science is a central component of jurors’ decisions in many criminal cases. Nevertheless, research has shown that jurors are not sensitive to violations of testimonial guidelines for expert testimony in court and generally struggle to comprehend and evaluate forensic science testimony. Consequently, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) dev...

Objective: We explored whether an educational forensic science informational (FSI) video either alone or with specialized jury instructions would assist mock jurors in evaluating forensic expert testimony. Hypotheses: We predicted that the FSI video would help participants distinguish between low-quality and high-quality testimony, evidenced by...

Objectives Past research has investigated factors that condition the association between self-control and antisocial behavior. Absent from consideration has been the possible moderating effect of alcohol intoxication.Methods Using a placebo-controlled experimental design, we explore whether alcohol intoxication moderates the association between sel...

This archival study was the first in Sweden, and the first outside of the US and the UK, to apply the (Kelly et al., Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 9, 165-178, 2013) taxonomy of interrogation methods framework to repeated police interrogations of adult suspects in high-stakes crimes. Audio/video recordings (N = 19) were collected from the Swed...

Background Low-stakes crimes related to alcohol and/or drugs are common around the world, but research is lacking on police–suspect interactions of such crimes. A large proportion of these suspects are intoxicated during interrogations, and many may have substance use disorder, making them potentially vulnerable to interrogative pressure.Methods To...

Background: Low-stakes crimes related to alcohol and/or drugs are common around the world, but research is lacking on police–suspect interactions of such crimes. A large proportion of these suspects are intoxicated during interrogations, and many may have substance use disorder, making them potentially vulnerable to interrogative pressure. Methods...

Best practice eyewitness interviewing mnemonics have not been tested with linguistically diverse samples. Cognitively complex mnemonics may overload non-native speakers' cognitive resources, which are already engaged in speaking a non-native language. Social facilitation mnemonics may help non-native speakers, who might be hesitant to report detail...

Objective: Law enforcement officers often encounter alcohol-intoxicated suspects, suggesting that many suspects are presented with the challenge of grasping the meaning and significance of their Miranda rights while intoxicated. Such comprehension is crucial, given that Miranda is intended to minimize the likelihood of coercive interrogations resu...

Background: Low-stakes crimes related to drugs and/or alcohol are common around the world, but research is lacking on police-suspect interactions during interrogations of such crimes. A large proportion of these suspects have substance use disorder, and many are intoxicated during interrogation, making them potentially vulnerable to interrogative p...

Research has demonstrated that psychologically-coercive tactics can increase the risk of false confessions. Given that jurors are decision-makers in our criminal justice system, it is essential to understand how they perceive such interrogation tactics and if certain juror demographics relate to these perceptions. The present study therefore focuse...

Background: Despite the common occurrence of alcohol-related crimes, the Swedish police authority currently lacks national guidelines for dealing with intoxicated victims/witnesses. Method: A survey was designed to explore the police procedures when encountering intoxicated individuals and to compare the findings with international statistics. To f...

Objectives To compare the efficacy of a psychologically-based contact tracing interview protocol to a control protocol that emulated current practices under both interviewer-led and self-led modalities. Methods This randomized controlled experiment utilized a 2 × 2 factorial design (Enhanced Cognitive protocol vs. Control protocol; Interviewer-led...

In this study, we investigate voters’ unaided perceptions of whether politicians are lying. We conduct an experiment in which participants attempt to uncover politicians’ dishonesty by watching videos of their speeches. We find that verbal cues (specifically, the amount of detail in the speech) and general demeanor cues explain the success (failure...

Rationale It is not uncommon for police to question alcohol-intoxicated witnesses and suspects; yet, the full extent to which intoxication impacts individuals’ suggestibility in the investigative interviewing context remains unclear. Objective The present study sought to measure the effect of alcohol-intoxication on interviewee suggestibility by i...

Alcohol-related crimes are very common globally, including in Scandinavia. Despite this, no survey to date has examined the prevalence of alcohol- and drug-intoxicated suspects in Sweden specifically, or which procedures police use when interacting with this suspect group. Given the current lack of (inter)national policy guidelines on how to interr...

Contact tracing is vital to controlling the spread of disease. This process relies on effective recall of past interactions during contact tracing interviews; as such, psychological science suggests that limitations on human memory and cognition could hinder contact tracing efforts. Methods for enhancing memory performance have been widely addresse...

Alcohol-intoxicated suspects’ confessions are admissible in U.S. courts; however, it is unknown how jurors evaluate such confessions. Study 1 assessed potential jurors’ perceptions of intoxication in interrogative contexts. Many respondents were unaware that questioning intoxicated suspects and presenting subsequent confessions in court are legal,...

Police commonly interview intoxicated suspects. This is concerning because intoxication often leads to a higher risk for impulsive decision-making, and reduces inhibition and consideration of the future. However, the manner in which intoxication affects people’s reporting of unethical or criminal actions carried out by themselves or others is unkno...

An online survey addressed Swedish police officers’ perceptions of the prevalence of intoxicated witnesses and victims, how police officers determine intoxication, procedures employed and their effectiveness, and how police officers perceive statements from intoxicated persons. Results indicate that intoxicated persons are common in investigations,...

Police commonly interact with intoxicated suspects; however, little is known regarding intoxicated suspects’ ability to understand and apply their Miranda rights. In the present study, laboratory participants were randomly assigned to alcohol, placebo, or control drinking conditions. Participants’ Miranda comprehension was analyzed using the Mirand...

Confession evidence is exceptionally strong (e.g., Kassin & Neumann, 1997); thus, understanding whether juror characteristics influence their perceptions of confession evidence is crucial to legal players’ trial strategies. Several past studies have found no significant correlations between certain juror demographics/personal beliefs (e.g., race/et...

Intoxicated witnesses are common, making it important to understand alcohol’s impact on witness accuracy and suggestibility. Participants assigned to an immediate retrieval condition encoded and recalled in one of the three intoxication conditions: sober control, placebo, or intoxicated. Participants in the delayed retrieval condition were assigned...

Confessions represent one of the most influential types of evidence, and research has shown that mock jurors often fail to dismiss unreliable confession evidence. However, recent studies suggest that jurors might believe in the false confession phenomenon more than they once did. One possible reason for this could be increased publicity regarding f...

Intoxicated witnesses are common, making it important to understand alcohol's impact on witness accuracy and suggestibility. Participants assigned to an immediate retrieval condition encoded and recalled in one of the three intoxication conditions: sober control, placebo, or intoxicated. Participants in the delayed retrieval condition were assigned...

The current study examined how factors including potential sentence discount (i.e., size of the “deal” offered), perspective (i.e., self vs. other), and individual differences in future orientation and belief in a just world are related to decisions to confess and accept a plea deal. Participants read four vignettes, describing themselves or a susp...

The use of interpreters in investigative interviewing settings is increasingly common as societies have become more diverse and interconnected. Interpreters serve as vital players in interviewing contexts ranging from interviewing witnesses in police interviews to the collection of intelligence from human sources when threats to national security a...

The use of interpreters in investigative interviewing settings is increasingly common as societies have become more diverse and interconnected. Interpreters serve as vital players in interviewing contexts ranging from interviewing witnesses in police interviews to the collection of intelligence from human sources when threats to national security a...

To stem the spread of infectious diseases (e.g., Ebola), epidemiologists conduct contact tracing interviews (CTIs) with infected individuals regarding their contacts who may also be infected. These contact tracing interviews, however, may be vulnerable to deadly errors of omission. A promising technique to maximise recall is the Cognitive Interview...

Introduction: The beliefs held by law enforcement personnel play a crucial part in the Swedish legal system. As such, these beliefs also play an important role in how potentially vulnerable groups such as alcohol-intoxicated witnesses, victims and suspects are perceived and engaged. Aim: The aims of the present study were to examine a) the prevalen...

Srull and Wyer (1979) demonstrated that exposing participants to more hostility-related stimuli caused them subsequently to interpret ambiguous behaviors as more hostile. In their Experiment 1, participants descrambled sets of words to form sentences. In one condition, 80% of the descrambled sentences described hostile behaviors, and in another con...

The self-concept maintenance theory holds that many people will cheat in order to maximize self-profit, but only to the extent that they can do so while maintaining a positive self-concept. Mazar, Amir, and Ariely (2008, Experiment 1) gave participants an opportunity and incentive to cheat on a problem-solving task. Prior to that task, participants...

Objectives: Many victims, witnesses, and suspects are intoxicated at the time of the crime and during the initial investigation. For example, over 80% of a U.S. law enforcement sample reported that contact with intoxicated suspects was common (Evans et al., 2009). In the U.S., intoxicated suspects are routinely interrogated using similar techniques...

Interpreters play an important role in the criminal justice system, yet little is known about the way interpreters are used. This survey of U.S. law enforcement (N = 299) assessed practices and perceptions regarding interpreter use during interviews with nonnative English speakers. Investigators reported using colleagues more often than professiona...

Introduction: Police often use handheld breathalyzers to make preliminary estimations of victims and suspect’s intoxication level. These initial measurements are often not valid as evidence in court. However, it is not always feasible for the officers to take the person to the police station and use a benchtop instrument for assessment. Aim: This s...

There is minimal research on metacognition in alcohol-intoxicated participants. Study 1 examined metacognition across sober, intoxicated, and placebo groups, with the intoxicated group's breath alcohol concentration reaching 0.074 g/210 L on average immediately prior to the metacognition task. Participants answered cued recall general knowledge que...

Witnesses and suspects are frequently intoxicated during their first interview. Alcohol impairs executive functioning (e.g. impulse control, judgement), which in turn could have negative consequences for interviewee behaviour (e.g. oversharing sensitive information). In a legal context, interviewees’ willingness to disclose either a personal transg...

This study examined the reliability between two handheld BACtrack S80 Pro Breathalyzers and the benchtop instrument Intoxilyzer 5000. The latter instrument was calibrated every day and is on the Department of Transportation’s Conforming Products List of Evidential Breath Alcohol Measurement Devices. Four different BAC readings were taken from 60 in...

Many witnesses and victims are intoxicated, but few studies have examined how alcohol affects eyewitness memory. The present study compared the effects of different interview approaches on intoxicated witnesses’ recall of an interactive event. Participants were randomly assigned to a condition within a 3 (Intoxication level: sober vs. placebo vs. i...

Many witnesses and victims are intoxicated, but few studies have examined how alcohol affects memory. The present study compared the effects of different interview approaches on intoxicated witnesses’ recall of an interactive event. Participants were randomly assigned to a condition within a 3 (Intoxication level: sober vs. placebo vs. intoxicated)...

Intoxicated witnesses and suspects in the U.S. are routinely questioned by law enforcement yet little is known about the effects of intoxication in legal contexts. The sparse research on the effect of intoxication on suggestibility is mixed. The current study will attempt to help clarify these mixed findings. Intoxicated, placebo, and control parti...

Many real-world eyewitnesses are under the influence of alcohol either at the time of the crime, the interview, or both. Only recently has empirical research begun to examine the effects of alcohol on witness memory, yielding mixed results. The present study tested the importance of state-dependent memory in the context of alcohol’s effects on enco...

Some innocent suspects rely on the memory of strangers to corroborate their alibis. However, no research has examined whether such potential alibi corroborators can accurately recognize an innocent suspect with whom they previously interacted. We developed a novel alibi corroboration paradigm in which undergraduate students (representing innocent s...

Intoxicated witnesses and suspects are common, and they are often intoxicated during their first interview. Alcohol impairs activity in the frontal lobes, which leads to impaired executive functions (e.g. impulse control, judgement), which in turn could have negative consequences (e.g. oversharing sensitive information). In a legal context, it is o...

Good self-control has been linked to adaptive outcomes such as better health, cohesive personal relationships, success in the workplace and at school, and less susceptibility to crime and addictions. In contrast, self-control failure is linked to maladaptive outcomes. Understanding the mechanisms by which self-control predicts behavior may assist i...

Many witnesses are intoxicated during the crime, and/or during the investigative interview. Jurors and experts often perceive these witnesses as less credible than sober witnesses. However, the present literature review shows that, in experimental studies, witnesses with a low to moderate blood alcohol concentration (<0.10%) rarely differs from sob...

A considerable number of witnesses and victims of crime are under the influence of alcohol. Both expert witnesses and jurors believe that alcohol impairs witness memory and a large body of research on alcohol's effect on basic cognitive processes suggests impairment. Only recently has research begun to investigate whether these basic research findi...

Building rapport with adult witnesses and suspects is recommended by major investigative interviewing protocols (e.g., Cognitive Interview and the Army Field Manual in the USA and PEACE in the UK). Although recent research suggests that building rapport can sometimes benefit police investigations by increasing the accuracy of adult eyewitness repor...

Objectives: We completed a systematic review and meta-analysis of the available empirical literature assessing the influence of accusatorial and information-gathering methods of interrogation in eliciting true and false confessions. Methods: We conducted two separate meta-analyses. The first meta-analysis focused on observational field studies that...

Despite growing interest in intelligence interviewing, there is little empirical research directly addressing interrogations conducted with the goal of collecting human intelligence (HUMINT). The current study used an experimental intelligence-gathering paradigm to test the efficacy of two clusters of emotion-based interrogation approaches from the...

The ability to accurately assess credibility is important in countless situations, including many in which individuals being assessed are not speaking their native language. There is reason to believe that native and non-native speakers may behave differently when lying and that detectors may have a bias to believe non-native speakers are lying. Ho...

Recent controversies over the use of psychologically manipulative interrogation methods by U.S. law enforcement, and public concerns regarding the use of physically coercive interrogation methods, have highlighted the need for evidence-based, ethical approaches to facilitate the collection of diagnostic information during interrogation. Over the pa...

Trevaskes S (2010) The shifting sands of punishment in the era of 'harmonious society'. Law Policy 32:332–361 Wang ZF (1989) (ed) Theory and practice of comprehensive management of public order in China. Masses Press, Beijing (in Chinese) Welsh B, Hoshi A (2002) Communities and crime prevention. In: Sherman L, Farrington DP, Welsh BC, MacKenzie DL...

The current set of studies was designed to test a new credibility assessment tool, the Psychologically Based Credibility Assessment Tool (PBCAT). Participants watched lab-generated videos of true and false alibi statements, provided while under varying degrees of cognitive load. Judges either provided a truth/lie judgment only, or also rated 11 beh...

Identifying interrogation strategies that minimize the likelihood of obtaining false information, without compromising the ability to elicit true information, is a challenge faced by both law enforcement and scientists. Previous research suggests that minimization and maximization techniques may be perceived by a suspect as an expectation of lenien...

Alcohol typically has a detrimental impact on memory across a variety of encoding and retrieval conditions (e.g., Mintzer, 2007; Ray & Bates, 2006). No research has addressed alcohol's effect on memory for lengthy and interactive events and little has tested alcohol's effect on free recall. In this study 94 participants were randomly assigned to al...

Although psychologists have urged police officers to use double blind line-up procedures during their investigations, police officers state that these would be difficult to administer and most have been reluctant to implement this change. Four studies examine whether lay people's judgements about the guilt of a suspect vary according to whether a b...

Psychology research has generally neglected intoxicated eyewitnesses. The current study addressed this need by exploring mock jurors' perceptions of intoxicated witnesses. Undergraduate participants read summarized sexual or aggravated battery cases in which either the victim or a bystander identified the defendant under varying intoxication levels...

Legal psychologists have generally neglected intoxicated witnesses and suspects in their research. One possible reason is the lack of objective information about the prevalence and characteristics of this witness and suspect group. Also unclear is whether standard police procedures for dealing with intoxicated individuals exist and what these may b...

The current research examined the potential benefit of context reinstatement on the cross-race effect in lineup identification. Participants viewed a series of own- and other-race faces and subsequently attempted identification of these faces from target-present and target-absent lineups. The traditional cross-race effect was found on measures of d...