A Taxonomy of Interrogation Methods Christopher E. Kelly, Jeaneé C. Miller, and Allison D. Redlich University at Albany, State University of New York Steven M. Kleinman The Soufan Group, New York, New York With a few notable exceptions, the research on interrogation, suspect interviewing, and intelligence collection has been predominantly focused on either broad categories of their methods (e.g., information gathering vs. accusatorial models) or very specific techniques (e.g., using open-ended questions, appealing to the source’s conscience). The broad categories, however, are not meaningful enough to fully describe the dynamic between interrogator and subject, whereas the specific techniques may be too detailed to understand and research the process of interrogation. To remedy this and advance the academic and operational fields, we identified 71 unique techniques and sorted them into six domains: Rapport and Relationship Building, Context Manipulation, Emotion Provocation, Collaboration, Con- frontation/Competition, and Presentation of Evidence. The resulting three-level structure consisting of broad categories, the six domains, and specific techniques form a taxonomy of interrogation methods. In addition, we propose a testable model of how the domains may interact in the process of interrogation. The taxonomy and theoretical model offer heuristic devices for both researchers and practitioners searching for a parsimonious and more meaningful way to describe, research, and understand the interviewing and interrogation of those accused of wrong-doing or possessing guilty knowledge. Keywords: interrogation, interviewing, intelligence collection, suspects Interrogation methods, whether employed in a law-enforcement, counterterrorism or military context, have garnered a great deal of attention in the past decade from policymakers, practitioners, scholars, and the general public. The relative prevalence of false confessions and the controversial use of coercive practices have highlighted attention on a single, overarching question: What strategies and techniques are (and are not) objectively effective in eliciting reliable information from suspected offenders, detainees, or sources? In part, because of the attention and controversy, the amount of academic scholarship on interviewing and interrogation has increased exponentially in the past 25 years, creating a vast, if disparate, literature on effective techniques. Psychologists and other scholars interested in interrogation have focused on answering the question above, and to a great degree they have been successful at discovering effective—and ineffec- tive—methods of interrogation. Their successes, however, have led to an embarrassment of riches of sorts. Because of the enor- mous amount of empirical evidence that has been generated in the past several decades, the field has become inundated with confus- ing terminology and the process of interrogation has been ne- glected in favor of discrete actions on the part of operators in the interrogation room. The purpose of the present undertaking, then, is not to answer the central question about effectiveness posed above, but rather, to attempt to impose order on the vastness of knowledge that has come before it and to reframe the issues such that researchers and practitioners can make sensible use of this crucial knowledge. When describing interrogation and criminal interviewing meth- ods, the techniques examined in the research to date typically fall at a broad or at a specific level. On the one hand, the broad categories often fall into generic either– or dichotomies: minimi- zation versus maximization; accusatorial versus information gath- ering; friendly versus harsh; rapport- versus control-based (e.g., Horgan, Russano, Meissner, & Evans, 2012; Inbau, Reid, Buckley, & Jayne, 2013; Meissner, Redlich, Brandon, & Bhatt, 2012). On the other hand, specific techniques, such as touching the suspect in a friendly manner, appealing to religion, yelling, or using open- ended questions, can be (and often are) sorted into one of the either– or dichotomies, depending on the aim of the technique (e.g., Kassin & McNall, 1991; Russano, Meissner, Narchet, & Kassin, 2005). Whereas the research on specific techniques has been instrumental in helping to identify precise tactics that are better able to produce accurate and reliable confessions or generate human intelligence, the broader categories have been useful to- ward advancing our understanding of interrogation and interview- ing in the most generic of terms. What is lacking in the interrogation and interviewing literature, however, is a fundamental taxonomic structure. Going from the macrolevel of very broad categories to the microlevel of very specific techniques potentially overlooks a level of organization that could be useful to researchers studying interrogation and operators applying methods in the field. Taxonomy, which is the science of classification, organizes what is known about a phe- This article was published Online First February 4, 2013. Christopher E. Kelly, Jeaneé C. Miller, and Allison D. Redlich, School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany, State University of New York; Steven M. Kleinman, The Soufan Group, New York, New York. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Christo- pher E. Kelly, 135 Western Avenue, Draper Hall 241-C, Albany, NY 12222. E-mail: ckelly@albany.edu Psychology, Public Policy, and Law © 2013 American Psychological Association 2013, Vol. 19, No. 2, 165–178 1076-8971/13/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0030310 165 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.