ASSIGNMENT
Recent global political changes mean that European militaries need to change their focus from mainly peacekeeping missions to getting ready for potential war. This also means they have to adjust how they train their personnel to work with local populations and communities during these situations.
In peacekeeping situations, it is often possible to develop lasting relationships with certain individuals, which helps build trust and rapport over time. In war scenarios, however, military personnel usually need to gather actionable intelligence from unknown individuals who might not trust a foreign military organisation and who may have different cultural norms.
It is critical that the military is able to elicit accurate intelligence to help avoid civilian casualties and to ensure adherence to its moral and ethical obligations.
This internship, and potentially an associated MSc thesis, starts to explore 1) how the military can help to prepare their personnel to build rapport and trust under these challenging conditions, and 2) how the military can best evaluate the accuracy of the information they receive. This may involve desk research and the development of experimental tests of the generated hypotheses.
There will be some scope to specialise in topics of your interest, but example research questions include:
- How does the amount of trust in a (military) organisation impact relationship building with an individual from that organisation?
- What is the impact of hostile symbolism on military vehicles on the development of trust and rapport between people?
- How do cultural expectations about non-verbal behaviour affect relationships?
- How can people gathering intelligence in war contexts evaluate the accuracy of the information received?
KEYWORDS
Human intelligence; military operations; rapport; trust; information elicitation.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION ORGANIZATION
The section Psychology of Conflict, Risk and Safety at the University of Twente has a distinctive and unique profile in the areas of risk perception and risk communication, conflict and crisis management and the antecedents of risky, antisocial and criminal behaviour. It currently includes 16 research staff members and 8 PhD students. We work from both a psychology and an engineering perspective and cooperate with other scientific disciplines, based on the “high tech, human touch” profile of the University of Twente.
AVAILABILITY
Available in block 1B. This internship is open for 2 students.
INTERESTED?
Please contact the internship coordinator Miriam Oostinga (m.s.d.oostinga@utwente.nl).
LITERATURE
- Hope, L., Surmon-Böhr, F., Alison, L., & Alison, E. (2024). Time Sensitive Interviews with Suspects, Witnesses, and Informants: Challenges and Opportunities. Journal of Applied Operational Intelligence, 1(1), 5-29. https://doi.org/10.5750/jaoi.v1i1.2278
- Hope, L., Hawkins de Namor, N., Gabbert, F., Ferenczi, N., & Oxburgh, G. (2025). From an investigator’s perspective: challenges and opportunities in building and maintaining rapport in cross-cultural investigative interviewing contexts. Journal of Criminal Psychology, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print). https://doi.org/10.1108/JCP-11-2024-0123
- Buehler, A., E., O. G., Peter, Z., Gerd-Dieter, W., & and Wesemann, U. (2019, 2019/01/02). Challenges for Research into Military Investigations. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 26(1), 50-64. https://doi.org/10.1080/13218719.2018.1482575
- de Bruïne, G., Vredeveldt, A., & van Koppen, P. J. (2025). The way we remember and report: an experiment testing cultural differences in eyewitness memory. Memory, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2025.2505213