Amazing stuff! Don't stop making 911 calls when you have to!
"When reporting violent events to 911, callers who fail to express expected levels of emotion and urgency may trigger suspicion that they are participants in the crime they are reporting – potentially the first step toward a wrongful conviction, Cornell research finds.
In four studies involving roughly 1,800 civilians and 300 law enforcement officers who listened to real or simulated 911 calls, researchers identified five behaviors that might make a caller seem suspicious. Conveying strong emotion and urgency reduced suspicion, while callers perceived to be communicating poorly, guarded in providing information or trying to make a favorable impression drew more suspicion.
“Having expectations for people’s demeanor on 911 calls is dangerous,” ... “People communicate in very different ways due to cultural and personality differences, neurodivergence, disabilities, or just the intense stress of the situation. There is no ‘one size fits all’ for responses to traumatic events.” ...
The paper is part of a broader initiative studying assumptions about suspicious behaviors and their validity at predicting guilt, work that includes development of a large database of 911 calls.
The research is relevant ... to a case in which a Texas man, Robert Roberson, was convicted and sentenced to death for murdering his infant daughter based on now-debunked “shaken baby evidence.” Despite a team of medical experts and even the detective who originally arrested Roberson fighting for his exoneration, he faces execution in October. Hospital staff and police perceived Roberson as oddly unemotional when he reported the death – but ... he has been diagnosed with severe autism, which means he lacked the ability to express emotion in ways people expect. ..."
From the abstract:
"Objective: Despite research on case factors that can trigger confirmation bias in investigations leading to wrongful convictions, we know little about what sparks this chain reaction and why an innocent person initially falls under suspicion. Across four studies, we investigated what perceived behaviors exhibited by 911 callers (urgency, emotionality, cognitive load, impression management, and information management) are related to laypeople’s (Studies 1-2, 4) and police officers’ (Study 3) suspicion toward the caller.
Hypotheses: We predicted, for lay and police samples, callers perceived as more urgent or emotional would be perceived as less suspicious, whereas callers perceived as more under cognitive load, managing information, or managing impressions of themselves would be perceived as more suspicious.
We tested whether these relationships depended on caller gender—predicting gender stereotypes might play a role, particularly with emotionality.
Method: Participants (Studies 1-2, 4: online laypeople, Study 3: police officers) listened to a real 911 call (Studies 1 and 4) or a more controlled, simulated 911 call (Studies 2 and 3) by a male or female caller. We assessed behavioral predictors associated with suspicion via participants’ spontaneous impressions and scales assessing these behaviors. Participants indicated how suspicious they found the caller and how much the caller violated their expectations.
Results: Participants spontaneously mentioned the callers’ emotionality most frequently and consistently across studies (77-85%). Perceptions of callers being more urgent and emotional were associated with less suspicion and violation of expectations, while perceptions of callers engaging in more information management and impression management were associated with more suspicion and violation of expectations.
Police, but not laypeople, perceived male callers as more suspicious than female callers—despite holding 911 call scripts constant.
Conclusion: Citizens engaging in the well-intentioned act of calling 911 risk observers—including police—holding expectations for their behavior and targeting them as a suspect if they violate those expectations."
From Caller to Suspect: Identifying Behaviors That Trigger Suspicion in 911 Calls (preprint, open access)
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