Interrogative Suggestibility

Katharine Shobes and John Kihlstrom, two research scholars from highly accredited institutions, provide insight into interrogative suggestibility and “memory work” in their discussion on the topics. While trying to explain the meaning of interrogative suggestibility, the authors uses an example of how it can be used to “brain wash” some patients in the clinical setting. Interrogative suggestibility is when clinicians use memory techniques like hypnosis, guided imagery and dreams to try and determine if women, who have come to see them for an unrelated illness like depression or anxiety, have been sexually abused in their childhood. The technique is highly controversial and it has led to many lawsuits, but the major claim that the authors try to formulate is interrogative suggestibility may yield memories that are grossly distorted or false outright but can be positive in some ways.

The authors discuss two quite different approaches to the study of interrogative suggestibility. The experimental approach continues to define the restraints, but it is clear that a substantial portion of subjects incorporate into their memories erroneous information contained in leading questions posed by the experimenter. The individual differences approach which documents individual differences in response to post-event misinformation, and their associations with various personality, social, and cognitive variables. There are two distinct types of suggestibility when it comes to questions, susceptibility to leading questions and response to negative feedback. Interrogative suggestibility differs from other types of suggestibility in three important ways: the questions are concerned with memory recollection of past experiences and events, the questioning procedure take space in a closed social interaction, and interrogative suggestibility builds on uncertainty of the individual and involves a stressful situation with major consequences for all involved. Interrogative suggestibility mimics other types of suggestibility, but there are some distinct aspects of interrogative suggestibility.

The five interrelated components of interrogative suggestibility are a closed social interaction between interviewer and interviewee, a questioning procedure, a suggestive stimulus, acceptance of the suggestive stimulus, and a behavioral response to the suggestion. The closed social interaction and questioning procedure requires questions to be asked to the interviewee from the interviewer which are guided by certain expectations and premises that either partly may hold and likely make their perception of the answers selective. There must also be interpersonal trust which allows the interviewee to genuinely trust the intentions, but the trust is the catalyst for leading questions or suggestions to be perceived as plausible or believable. There must also be a suggestive stimulus like leading questions that will influence a person who has developed a suggestible cognitive set. Hypnosis, guided imagery, dream interpretation and journaling are all suggestive stimuli that reduce source monitoring. There must also be a large degree of uncertainty when a person’s memory for the vent is incomplete or non-existent. Uncertainty is a situation where the person does not know the right answer to a question, and relates to the strength of the person’s internal frame of reference rather than feelings of confidence. The different forms of suggestive stimuli help the clinician to retrieve the forgotten traumatic memories and are the catalyst for the integration, assimilation, and resolution of the trauma. The fourth component of interrogative suggestibility is acceptance of the stimulus. The basic aspect of this component is that the person must exhibit some acceptance of the stimuli in order for interrogative suggestibility to continue. This does not mean the person must incorporate the information into his or her memory, but rather that the suggestion is perceived to be plausible and credible. There must also be an expectation for success along with uncertainty which helps to make the person highly suggestible to new ideas that seem logical and are supported by suggestions from the interviewer. The final component of interrogative suggestibility is a behavioral response to the suggestion. This basically means that believing or accepting the suggestion privately is not sufficient, or in other words, the person must make some kind of verbal suggestion that he or she accepts the suggestion. This is accomplished when the client discusses the suggestion with their therapist, friend, or family member about what she believed happened to her. Interrogative suggestibility uses several techniques that involve highly suggestive situations