Science-Based Interviewing: What Taylor Swift and my Daughter Taught Me About Interrogation
- Christian Cory
- Jan 28
- 7 min read
Are you ready for it?
I became a case study in provocation. It just happened in my house. As a father, I am obliged to supply endless dad jokes and generally embarrass daughters and wife. Unsurprisingly, it comes naturally and it’s enjoyable. Ladies, if you are or ever have been a daughter or sister, there is no need to read any further, the following information is tactics reserved for dads. I will offer two top-secret techniques and I don’t want to ruin any punchlines...
These two tactics worked flawlessly. Visible reactions. Eye rolls. Accusations of lameness. So here they are, please steal and enjoy:
Whenever my daughter, with or without friend(s), would be jamming to or singing along to a Taylor Swift song, I’d casually say, “I love Shania Twain.” This produces groans, ugh’s, and long eye-rolls. Perfect!
New Taylor Swift song comes out, it comes with new lyrics, sung by dad. “It’s me, why, I’m the problem, it’s memes…,” “Got a long list of Starbucks lovers!” “A new nunchuck in your belt…,” One of my daughter’s best friends looked at me sadly once and said, “Mr. Cory…this hurts my heart.” Mission accomplished.
Eventually, my daughter adapted. The last time I tried one of my sweet dad joke tactics, she didn’t react at all. She just looked at me, face palm fully extended and said, “I’m not going to let you rage-bait me,” and walked away. And just like that, my anxiety-producing shenanigans were over. It was fun while it lasted.
I swear this is going to get to Science-Based Interviewing (SBI)…but it’s a journey.
This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things
For decades, interview and interrogation classes leaned hard into the idea of the interrogational “toolbox”, confessions are king, and the anecdotal “best practices” as stated by the current teacher. They all revolved around accusatorial, confession-seeking models, notions drawn from television/movies, pop psychology, and pseudo-science. The issues are not limited to one bad idea but rather constitute a multitude of untested methods not backed by any research on information-gathering or human interactions and mostly relying on appeals to the authority of the instructor’s resume.
Now what does messing with my daughter, her mother, and Taylor Swift fans that visited my house have to do with bad ideas in interview and interrogation training? Simple—some accusatorial interrogation methods have it that if you increase emotions through provocations, you will not only test reactions (using pseudoscientific measures) but you will get more case information, get the truth, or, of course, obtain the ostensible Holy Grail of interrogation—a confession (for a further discussion of the problems with the system’s confession obsession, and the pursuit of more fruitful targets, see Hartwig & Cory, 2025)
Here are some examples of emotional provocation taken directly from interview and interrogation curricula. It is known, to this author, that these are still being taught to law enforcement as late as 2024:
One gem found under a title that included “intimidation” is the recommended use of the interviewer’s voice, posture, and expressions to signal annoyance or pressure, attempting to make the other person feel uneasy, worried, or guilty.
Reaction-seeking - deliberately say or do things to spark a response and see how the person reacts in the moment. Presumably, this is so the interrogator can observe if the reaction is one of a guilty or an innocent person (yet science shows we are far less accurate at ‘reading’ others than we think, and our ability to ‘read’ lies is barely above chance; see Vrij, Hartwig, & Granhag, 2019).
Now and only now ask the stressful questions or emotionally laden questions…get reactions and information of course, to test the individual.
The more conscious or subconscious guilt they feel, the more anxiety they will manifest under such questioning.
The ideas and practices were simple: increase anxiety, provoke emotion, and something useful will leak out. Maybe they’ll blurt out the truth in the heat of the moment. Maybe they’ll fidget just right. Maybe their body language will “tell” on them; further proof of guilt of course. If nothing else, crank up the pressure until you get a confession.
The problem? That approach works as poorly as trolling a sassy teenager who loves Taylor Swift. It certainly doesn’t help with building rapport. It doesn’t involve listening, let alone active listening; my hassling was just me being ornery by provoking a quick reaction. When people feel pressured and accused, as they do when accusatory tactics are used, they don’t become more honest, they become less cooperative. They become more guarded. More resistant to tell you information. Or they disengage completely (much like refusing to be further rage-baited). Sometimes they’ll say whatever they think will end the interaction fastest because it’s unpleasant; what they say may or may not be accurate. That’s not information gathering. That’s noise generation.
Science-Based Interviewing is a wholly different approach with suspects. Instead of trying to provoke information, it’s built to invite it. Calm replaces confrontation. Curiosity replaces pressure. Open-ended questions replace verbal pokes. The goal isn’t to trigger emotion and then read tea leaves in someone’s posture, it’s to create the conditions where accurate information is brought out - a lot more of it, according to research - because information, not a confession is the goal.
And here’s the irony: when you stop trying to force reactions, you get more case relevant information. People talk longer. Statements become more detailed. There is rapport, not hostility. Inconsistencies surface. You don’t need to “catch” someone with theatrics, you let their story do the work for you.
It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me
Accusatory (the “me” in this heading) tactics actively undermine investigations. They decrease the amount of statement evidence gathered, decrease cooperation, contaminate the statement, and increase resistance (Kelly, et al., 2024; Russano et al., 2024; Russano et al., 2026). Once accusations and a drive to get a confession are set in motion, the interview stops being about understanding events or even gathering objective case information; it starts being about confirming a pre-existing belief. Productive questions disappear, accusation dominates, and curiosity collapses. There is now only one goal.
The confession obsession is the core philosophical flaw of accusatory approaches, even if their marketing claims that their goal is to extract ‘the truth.’ These techniques assume that an innocent person won’t confess to a crime they did not commit, rather than recognizing that pressure, minimizations, theming, and authority can manufacture the very behaviors they claim to reveal. Anxiety is mistaken for deception. Deception is seen as guilt. Resistance, caused by foul interviewer behavior, is treated as a wall to break through. And when the interaction becomes about control instead of cooperation, the interviewer is no longer merely observing any sort of behavior or being guided by case information, they are shaping it.
There is now a considerable body of scientific research on effective and ineffective interviewing and interrogation (for a comprehensive review of the state of the science, see Oxburgh, Myklebust, Fallon, & Hartwig, 2023). This research forces a necessary conclusion: Our interview and interrogation playbook in America is out of step with the scientific facts. If the goal is to obtain information, as completely and reliably as possible, We (including me) and our techniques are the variables that need to change. We must acknowledge that accusatory tactics and confession-driven systems don’t expose truth; they introduce false case information, biases, and, in the worst cases, false confessions. The scientific consensus on this matter is clear: Accusatorial tactics decrease the amount and reliability of information (Kassin et al., 2025), thereby damaging investigations and corrupting the legal process.
Science-Based Interviewing’s Long Story Short
Here’s the funny thing: when you stop trying to force reactions, you usually get more substance. People talk longer. Details increase. Inconsistencies surface naturally. You don’t need to “catch” or “trick” someone with theatrics, let their story, elicited by skilled questioning (which SBI contains guidelines and structure for), do the work for you.
This brings me back to Taylor Swift. My early tactic relied on provocation to get a reaction or a quick laugh. In an interviewing setting, what value does an emotional reaction that is provoked by the interviewer have? The answer is none. Also, as my daughter’s later response shows, there is another serious downside: Once someone recognizes the provocation, the tactic is bound to fail.
Old tactics assume stress and anxiety reveals truth, tells, and gotchas. Research clearly says otherwise. So, if this article made you annoyed or tempted to say I’m not taking this subject seriously enough...shake it off.
Science-Based Interviewing References
Hartwig, M. & Cory, C. (2025). A paradigm shift in Science-Based Interviewing: Interrogating to elicit true and false exculpatory statements. Police Chief Online, June 18, 2025. https://www.policechiefmagazine.org/paradigm-shift-science-based-interviewing/?ref=4728eaf571be9d87e238d6f969b68967
Kelly, C. E., Parker, M., Meehan, N., & McClary, M. (2024). Evidence presentation in suspect interviews: A review of the literature. The Police Journal. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032258x241243286
Oxburgh, G.E., Myklebust, T., Fallon, M., & Hartwig, M. (2023). Interviewing and Interrogation: A Review of Research and Practice since World War II. Torkel Opsahl Academic EPublisher: Brussels.
Russano, M. B., Meissner, C. A., Atkinson, D. J., Brandon, S. E., Wells, S., Kleinman, S. M., Ray, D. G., & Jones, M. S. (2024). Evaluating the effectiveness of a 5-day training on science-based methods of interrogation with U.S. federal, state, and local law enforcement investigators. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law: An Official Law Review of the University of Arizona College of Law and the University of Miami School of Law, 30(2), 105–120. https://doi.org/10.1037/law0000422
Russano, M. B., Meissner, C. A., Jones, M. S., Rothweiler, J. N., Taylor, P. J., Cory, C., & Brandon, S. E. (2026). Evaluating the effectiveness of a practitioner-designed science-based interviewing and interrogation course: A collaborative training and research effort. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law.
Vrij, A., Hartwig, M., & Granhag, P. A. (2019). Reading lies: Nonverbal communication and deception. Annual Review of Psychology, 70(1), 295-317.