Social Behaviour in Police Interviews: Relating Data to Theories - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 312

Huls Mr Huls is suspected of the theft of a small amount of cash from a petrol
station. He is a professionally trained actors for the police, has financial problems
and has difficulty feeding his family.
Motor Actors from this scenario performed (with criminal exemption) an actual
theft of an outboard motor and they played themselves. They try to appear
innocent but are instructed to admit when the evidence gets too strong to
reasonably deny the crime. The police students are not aware the suspects are
guilty and treat them as any other suspect.
Remerink Ms Remerink is suspected to have stolen money from her (ex)
husband's bank account. She is a full-time mother and gave up her career for
their kids. Her (ex) husband is wealthy and he left Ms Remerink for another
woman.
Va n B ro n Mr Van Bron is suspected of arson with the intent to kill his neighbour.
Van Bron has an anti-social or bipolar disorder and has a criminal record.
His girlfriend made a statement implicating Mr Van Bron.
Wassink Mrs Wassink is suspected to have physically attacked her neighbour
over an argument about the dog of that neighbour. Wassink is a working-
class mother whose world is as big as the neighbourhood she lives in and
she is suspicious of people not originating from her neighbourhood (like her
neighbour).

The actors are allowed to change the scenarios according to their preferences and
to fill in the details as they see fit. This means that instances of interviews from the
same scenario may be different, yet the police officers are always training with the
same persona .

16.2.2 Observations of the Corpus

Six observers 1 with previous experience in interaction analysis independently
viewed a selection of interviews from the corpus. They selected fragments that
they thought were “interesting in some way” (step 2 in Fig. 16.1 ), for example,
fragments in which a change in mood or atmosphere took place or fragments in
which specific behaviour could be observed. The observers noted as many different
terms as possible to describe what was going on in their fragments. The following
is an example excerpt from the Remerink scenario (translated from Dutch):

POLICE : My name is Bill [ Surname ]. 2

Can we address each other by our first

name?
SUSPECT : Well I don't think so.

1 The first six authors of this chapter.
2 Names are fake and/or anonymised for privacy.