breaking (the) ice: communication error management in law enforcement interactions
Miriam Oostinga is a PhD Student in the research group Psychology of Conflict, Risk and Safety (PCRS). Her supervisors are Professor Ellen Giebels and Professor Paul Taylor from the Faculty of Behavioural Management and Social Sciences (Professor Paul Taylor also Lancaster University)
Over the last two decades the focus of research has been on what should be said and done in suspect interviews and crisis negotiations to make the suspect cooperate. Less is known, however, about what happens when a law enforcement officer says something in error. The goal of this doctoral thesis is, therefore, to 1) describe the type of errors made as well as the follow-up responses used by law enforcement officers, 2) understand the impact of errors on the suspect (the error receiver), but also on the law enforcement officers themselves (the error sender), and 3) determine the relative effectiveness of various kinds of responses. By doing this, this thesis creates the groundwork for error research within this and related domains on which future research can build. Next to that, this research can be used by practitioners to provide some initial guidance for when this situation occurs. Overall, communication errors appear to have positive and negative effects, but it is the following response that may incline law enforcement officers to break (the) ice.
