Interviewing: Achieving Rapport (Part One)

By identifying a subject's dominant mode of expression -- visual, auditory, or sensation (and when he or she deviates from it) you can mirror the subject and begin to achieve rapport. 

Sam, a suspect in a fraud examination, sits in the interview room with his arms crossed and a frown on his face.

"I don't see why I'm here," Sam says. "It seems to me that you ought to be out there looking for the guy who did it. I tried to show you what happened, but you just don't want to see it. You had better focus your investigation somewhere else because if you are looking at me then you are looking at the wrong man."

Brian, the fraud examiner, is exasperated. "Listen here," he says. "I'm going to tell you why you are here. I have already heard your side of the story, but I'm telling you right now that you can just tune that noise out. If you think I'm going to listen to that song, you're barking up the wrong tree. Now pay attention to what I am going to say."

How much valuable information will Brian extract from his interview with Sam? Very little but it's not just because of Brian's bad attitude. Brian needs to move Sam from the "unwilling chair" to the "willing chair" by developing a rapport with him through some tested investigatory methods.

In the willing chair, the subject is ready to tell you whatever you need to know: what he did, saw, or heard, and what happened to him. Consequently, all that's required is the appropriate questioning technique to recover the information.

However, the subject seated in the unwilling chair  whether suspect, victim, or witness has good reasons to withhold the truth: fear of prosecution, embarrassment of being bilked, reluctance to get involved. Your job is to conduct musical chairs and change the subject's mind.

You can do that by developing rapport through words, expressions, and postures. We can define rapport as "relation, connection, especially harmonious or sympathetic relation." From the Latin apportare meaning to carry.¹ That definition is particularly appropriate because rapport can be the vehicle to carry the fraud examiner into the subject's world, through the development of a positive, productive relationship, to change the subject's behavior.

The Brain: the Human Computer  

Information enters the human computer through the senses.² We not only learn through the senses, we communicate through the language of the senses. For example, a person may communicate through the sense of sight:

"I don't see why I'm here. It looks to me like you ought to be out there looking for the one who did it. I'm just the first guy you saw. I think you need to focus your investigation somewhere else because if you're looking at me, you're looking at the wrong guy."

Another may communicate through the sense of hearing: "It sounds to me like you are trying to say that I did it, and I am telling you that I didn't." And another might use the sense of touch or feeling: "Hey, I feel like you guys are trying to pin this thing on me." Or taste: "The whole thing was a bitter pill for me to swallow." Or finally, smell: "He wanted to sell me the stuff, but the deal was kind of fishy to me. I just thought, this whole thing stinks."

So, obviously, to build rapport, we tell the seeing-sense subject: "I see what you are showing me and I want to see how this looks to you." To the hearing-sense subject, we would say, "I hear what you are saying and I want to determine how this sounds to you." Subjects oriented to the sense of touch need the fraud examiner to say, "I understand your feeling and I would like to determine how this sounds to you."

Let's look at opening exchange between Sam and Brian. Sam says, "I don't see why I'm here." He uses such words as looking, show, and focus. Brian replies, "Listen here. I'm going to tell you why you are here." He uses such words as heard, tune, noise, and barking. If Brian doesn't change to Sam's visual language, he won't begin to create rapport between them and he's wasted his time.

Sometimes you'll need to shift the subject's sensory operation. Think of the human mind as a television set with three channels -- visual, auditory, and sensation (or feeling). Your job is to change the subject's channel.

Visual Eye Movements  

A subject states, "I believe that the situation was one that he should have thought about more before he acted." From which channel -- visual, auditory, or sensation -- is the subject drawing the data on which his conclusion is based? Well, the statement contains no terms on which we can readily base our response.

However, the answers can be found in the subject's eyes; there are corresponding eye movements and positions for each of the senses of sight, hearing, and touch.³ The visually oriented subject should display one or both of a pair of eye-movement patterns that indicate visual memory processing: the eyes move upward and to the subject's left, and/or the eyes look straight ahead.⁴

You've seen eye movements of this type all you life, but you probably haven't assigned any meaning to them until now. Maybe you remember asking someone when he or she last went to court, for example, and that person looked up at the ceiling and said, "Let me see, it must have been last June." Well, that information isn't written on the ceiling, nor is the ceiling just some place where she parked her eyes. Her movement of her eyes to that spatial quadrant allowed her mind to recover visually stored data.

Another eye-movement pattern is "visual construction": looking upward and to the subject's right for a visually oriented person.⁵ This pattern might be demonstrated if you asked someone the question, "How would it look to you if four months from now you were given a $4,500 raise and promoted by two positions on the organizational chart?" The raise and promotion wouldn't have happened yet so there's nothing to remember. What the individual responding has to do instead is construct the suggested image, evaluate what he sees, and then answer the question.

But what about the visual construction of a past event? Let's look at an interview of a suspect in a cash larceny case. Linda, a bank teller, is suspected of stealing money from the vault at the end of her work day.

Q: "Linda, let's look back at last Friday, and you show me what happened from the time you arrived at the bank until the time when you left." (Subject's eyes shift up and to the left.)

A: "Well, let's see. I got there about 7:15 in the morning. I made sure (eyes shift to look straight ahead) my drawer was in order and prepared for arrival of customers. I saw quite a few customers until about 4. (eyes shift up and to the right). And... uh... let's see... uh, after the bank closed, I reconciled and left at 5, and that's about it."

First, we notice that there is some degree of visual memory processing and the subject's vocabulary corresponds to her eye movements. Second, we notice the subject begins to visually construct when she describes what happened after the bank closed. We'd therefore have to consider why the subject would need to construct a past event -- especially with the eye-movement pattern associated with construction that marks a change -- if we haven't seen this pattern with the subject. The subject is indicating that she wishes to look at his answer first before showing it to the investigator. If it looks all right to him, then the investigator can see it. If not, then the subject will have to modify the answer.

The third thing we notice is a related change in the subject's speech pattern. She uses "false sounds": "us... let's see... uh." Prior to this time, she has spoken fluently and smooth. But once we get past the events leading up to 5 p.m., in conjunction with the signs of visual construction, we begin to get the false sounds and empty words. These hesitation patterns are similar to the music we hear when we're put on hold in a telephone conversation. In a sense, she's saying, "I'm not ready to give you an answer yet, but I will give you some noise so that you will stay on the line."

The fourth thing we notice is the number of qualifiers and hedges in the subject's vocabulary. A "qualifier" can be defined as a word that "modifies or limits the meaning."⁶ "To hedge" can be defined as "to hide behind words; refuse to commit oneself or give a direct answer."⁷ For example, the subject tells us, "That's about it." If "that" is "about it," what does "it" mean? What "it" means is that "that" is not all of it. We have to pay attention to every word the subject says. Often, the subject reveals his rationalization and lack of commitment through these examples.

Auditory Eye Movements  

Certain eye movements indicate that a subject is remembering sounds and has changed to the auditory channel.⁸ Eye movements for auditory memory are indicated by two separate eye positions: both eyes down and to the left, and horizontally to the left. When the eyes are placed down and to the left, the subject will refer to what he has heard (external sounds remembered): "David said that he would be there on Friday night." However, when the eyes are horizontally to the left, the subject is referring to something he thought or said (internal sounds remembered): "I told David that I would meet him there on Friday." Or "I told myself that the entire situation sounded funny to me."

In a modification of the earlier example, you might now ask, "How would it sound to you if they told you that you were going to get a $4,500 pay raise and if they said that you would be promoted by two positions?" The auditory individual would build an image based on the suggested sounds, and then would listen, evaluate, and respond, "That would be music to my ears," or "I like that sound of that," or "I would like to hear that."

Again, though, if you were interviewing someone about an incident that had occurred in the past and you noticed a change in the subject's eye-movement patterns to those indicating auditory construction, you'd be alerted. This change would be especially noteworthy if the construction signs occurred in conjunction with an associated change in speech patterns or the introduction of qualifiers and hedges into the narrative. You would ask yourself why the subject would now be constructing an event that supposedly had occurred in the past as well as where in the narrative that change began to show up.

Sensation Eye Movements  

Many times you'll have started an interview with a subject who initially is sitting upright in his chair but eventually will begin looking toward the floor. The subject has switched to the sensation (or feeling) channel. Other patterns include eyes looking downward and to the right,⁹ eyes closing, and eyes fluttering or blinking rapidly (which is also a possible sign of intended deception).

You also know the subject is changing to the sensation channel when his head droops, and he takes a deep breath and exhales. Watch for his head to come back up. If his arms and legs continue to be held away from the body probably he'll cooperate. However, if after he exhales and lifts his head and his arm and legs close into his body at the same time, then cancel Christmas. It's likely the subject will declare, "I think, before we go any further, I had better get a lawyer."

So your job, once the subject has switched to this channel, is to use the vocabulary of sensation to encourage the subject to "stay tuned." Move your chair so that you're sitting to the subject's right. A touch on the elbow or shoulder can help.

Purposefully Establishing Rapport  

Now that you can identify the dominant sensory modality of a subject -- visual, auditory, or sensation -- by his eye movements and language, you can sympathetically mimic his nonverbal behavior to gain rapport and possibly free the subject to tell more of the truth.

You should adopt a posture similar to the subject's. If he has his right leg crossed over his left, sit with your left leg crossed over your right -- a direct reflection. If the subject has his right hand to his chin, you'll have your left hand to your chin. I practice this technique while watching interview programs on television. By becoming a reflection of the "subject" on the screen, I can both improve my technique and practice looking for the telltale eye movements and listening for the appropriate vocabulary. Eventually, you'll learn how to mirror your subject automatically.

You can test your subject to see if you've established rapport by introducing some change into your own nonverbal behavior: nod your head slowly, raise your hand, cross your legs, etc. If the subject begins to reflect your behavior, you probably have rapport. The road between you and your subject has been laid and you can now travel into the subject's world to influence his behavior -- to move him from the unwilling chair to the willing.

In the next issue: the process of deception 

Don Rabon, for more than 20 years, has instructed investigators and federal, state, and local criminal justice personnel in 40 states, Puerto Rico, Belgium, and Germany. He also has provided training to NATO counter-intelligence personnel. Rabon had rural and municipal law enforcement experience and provides investigative technical assistance to entities throughout the United States. He is a longtime ACFE faculty member.  

For further information on the interviewing process read Don Rabon's two books, "Interviewing and Interrogation," and "Investigative Discourse Analysis," both available from the ACFE. -- ed.  

1 The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, 2d. ed. (1976)
2 Interviewing ST -- 305, Student Text. Federal Law Enforcement Training Center/Department of the Treasury, Washington, DC (May1981), p. 43.
3 Richard Bandler and John Grinder, Frogs into Princes (Moab, UT: Real People Press, 1979), p. 36.
4 Ibid., p. 18.
5 Ibid., p. 13.
6 Webster's New World Dictionary
7 Ibid.
8 Bandler and Griner, Frogs into Princes, p. 25
9 Ibid.