The Interview Room Archives

Classic Articles on Investigative Interviewing

The Interview Room Archive banner showing a two-way mirror view of an investigative interview room with table and case file as a female investigator observes, representing classic investigative interviewing articles by Stan B. Walters.

For many years Stan B. Walters published The Interview Room, an international electronic magazine read by investigators, law enforcement professionals, and interview specialists around the world.

The articles in this archive explore investigative interviewing, interrogation strategy, deception detection, and behavioral analysis—ideas that helped challenge outdated assumptions and shape modern thinking in the field.


Confession Motivators: Gain or Pain

Citation: Originally published in The Interview Room
January 2008 (Volume 7, Number 1) — by Stan B. Walters.

For each of us, the only reason we change our minds about a decision that we have already made is when someone or something convinces us to abandon our first decision and a new or different point of view. In our mind in some measurable one when see the new position we have taken is being more rewarding or satisfying than the old. We have made the change after we have been motivated by our perception of "gain" or "pain." The same evaluation process is being made in the mind of our interview or interrogation subject while we are persuading them to change their current position and begin to cooperated with us and comply with our requests for information or even confession. If you can understand the "gain" or "pain" motivation of your subject and demonstrate to your subject a big distinction between the two, you'll have a better chance at gaining compliance, cooperation and confession.

In the Gain vs. Gain scenario, you subject has already concluded that he has much more to gain by remaining consistent with the position he has already assumed. First you have two hurdles to overcome, your subject's commitment to staying consistent with his decision and second demonstrating to him or her the position you want them to choose will provide them even more to gain than they may realize. In this case you'll need to acknowledge that you subject does have some things to gain by sticking with their decision and point out that the new point of view may also have those very same rewards. That it itself however, is not enough to move your subject. You'll have emphasize the advantages your subject has overlooked or has undervalued in terms of their importance to him and his "gain" objective.

In the second scenario which is Pain vs. Pain, there is the possibility that your interviewee has seen no gain for them at all by accepting your conclusions and you'll have a long road of persuasion ahead of you. It that case you'll need to demonstrate to the subject that they have overlooked some pain issues with their point of view and to accept your proposition. Your recommended position may also afford the subject some "pain" but not nearly as much as what they had not anticipated if they decided to "stand" by his initial choice. In most cases, carefully listening to your subject and their reasons for rejecting your proposal, you'll hear the gain-pain issue or issues that is driving your subject's resistance. You'll need to focus on those issues because their are important to your subject but may not be that important to you.

The final scenario is usually the easiest to deal with and that's the Pain vs. Gain format. In this case, it is much easier to convince your subject to abandon their choice to resist your recommendations to solve the issue. They already see themselves has having to deal with some level of "pain" as a result of their behavior and all you have to do is show them the "light" and get them to look forward and see to "gains" they can make by reevaluating their current pain-filled situation. In many cases, just pointing out what may be obvious "gain" to you is all that is needed because your subject is "blinded" by their current state and has missed the benefits of changing they judgment about the possible outcomes of cooperation.

In any of the three scenarios above, the interviewer has to realize that their subject is motivated by "their" perception of Gain vs Pain. The evaluation by the subject as to what they define as gain or pain may not even be close to what you as the interviewer think is worth gaining or avoiding. Once the interviewer recognizes their subject's gain or pain motivation he can key in on those issues. The greater the distinction you can make between Gain - Gain, Gain - Pain, and Pain - Pain, the more likely and the more quickly you'll get the subject to come to the conclusion to abandon their current preferred decision and accept the interviewer's recommendation.

© 2008 Stan B. Walters / Third Degree Publishing. All rights reserved.
This article is part of The Interview Room Archive Series, preserving classic writings on investigative interviewing and interrogation strategy.

Many of the concepts introduced in these early articles continue to evolve today through Stan Walters’ work on the Cognitive Reliability Framework and evidence-based interview practices.

Cognitive Reliability Framework

Joran Van der Sloot:

His Mom Speaks ” My son is sick in his head.”

Stan B. Walters

Joran Van der Sloot’s Mom said in an interview with a Dutch newspaper “My son is sick in his head.”  She blames the media and the death of Joran’s father as the cause for her son committing murder.  Sorry Mrs. Van der Sloot, your son just willingly engages in deviant behavior – always has and always will. He knows what he is doing.

Joran Van der Sloot certainly exhibits deviant behavior and in my opinion is most likely a sexual predator.  He appears to match the profile of a psychopath.

We have to be careful about bantering around “mentally ill.”  It leads the public to believe that Van der Sloot is not in control of his own actions and is unaware of the consequences of his behavior.  For Joran it is quite the opposite.  Joran Van der sloot demonstrates a high level of awareness of his actions which by the way are always in response his needs without consideration for the pain and suffering he causes others.  He is a very organized personality.  In his case he has willingly failed to control his own behaviors.

Certainly stress factors can trigger apparently inappropriate behaviors in any person.  My question to Joran’s Mom would be what stress factors caused him to allegedly murder Natalee Holloway?  There was no media coverage of him prior to her disappearance and his father was alive!

Often when we can’t understand the apparently deviant behaviors of a friend or family member, it is easy to blame it on “mental illness” as the cause.  I believe that’s because we can’t understand the other person’s motivation and fortunately for us, we can’t imagine engaging is such behavior ourselves, therefore “he must be sick.”

Joran Van der Sloot’s behavior is probably best explained as a “psychology of evil.”  He will not be denied anything he wants, he is well spoken, easily overcomes another person’s fears about him, has a high threshold of excitement or stimulation, he has a low tolerance for stress or anything that frustrates him, he has no empathy for the people he is destroying, doesn’t learn from his mistakes, he is cunning, he is manipulative, and he is a chronic liar.  I still say that if we investigate his background more thoroughly we will find MANY deviant social acts and criminal offenses that have been missed, dismissed, and even ignored.  He has MANY more victims of deviant behavior than we will ever know.

You can take it to the bank that Joran’s confession to Peruvian authorities is still not very close to the whole truth.  Oh sure, he gave them enough that he may be convicted – enough to match the forensics.  BUT, the actual interaction between him and Flores, conversations between them, Flores specific actions have been grossly altered to suit Joran’s point of view and benefit.  Notice from previous stories how Joran portrays himself as the “victim” of Flores snooping into his personal life.  Again, I think a key phrase was Joran’s slip in saying that she tried to “escape.”  I’d bet that the time Joran spent in the room with her body was time spent fantasizing about what happened and developing and practicing a plausible “story.”  Why not, Joran has proven himself very successful at making up plausible stories in the past!

When he is interviewed by the Lima judge next week, I hope he doesn’t fall pry to Joran’s charms and believe the lies Joran has cooked up for him.  If we hear about ANY of the story he tells the judge, I’m willing to bet there are going to be some changes and additions to the initial confession he gave to the Peruvian police.  Also it wouldn’t surprise me if he starts suffering from “memory lapses” and plays up his Moms diagnosis that he is “sick in his head.”

Joran Van der Sloot is a classic example of an anti-social personality type who is fully aware of his behaviors but has and continues to manipulate people for his own personal desires. Put him in the Peruvian prison and let him rot. 

Just my opinion anyway.

Stan
“The Lie Guy”
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