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4 Legal & Criminological Psych. 1 (1999)

handle is hein.journals/legadclpy4 and id is 1 raw text is: Legal and Criminological Psychology (1999), 4, 1-13 Printed in Great Britain 1 © 1999 The British Psychological Society The effects of alcohol on interrogative suggestibility: The role of State-Anxiety and mood states as mediating factors Pekka Santtila* Police College, Espoo and Department of Psychology, Abo Akademi University, Turku, Finland Magnus Ekholm Department of Psychology, Abo Akademi University, Turku, Finland Pekka Niemi Department of Psychology, University of Turku, Finland Purpose. The goal of this study was to determine whether alcohol would increase or decrease interrogative suggestibility. Methods. Four groups of participants (N = 51) were administered the story and immediate recall of the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale 2. After this they were administered one of three doses of alcohol or a placebo followed by delayed recall and the questioning part of the scale. Changes in mood and anxiety were monitored with the help of Profile of Mood States and Spielberger State-Anxiety Scale. Results. Alcohol decreased yielding to leading questions both before (Yield 1) and after (Yield 2) interrogative pressure was applied but had no effect on changing answers in response to the pressure (Shift). State-Anxiety and Clearheaded-Confused mood were found to mediate the effects of alcohol on Yield 2. No other significant mediational relationships were found. Conclusions. Alcohol appears to decrease suggestibility with the exception of reactions to applied interrogative pressure. This decrease is not totally explainable by the mediating effects of either mood states or anxiety. Consider the following scenario: a serious assault occurred one week ago and the police have just caught the man they think is the perpetrator. He is severely intoxicated but is nevertheless questioned by the investigators as they are eager to solve the case and get a confession from the man. During the interrogation the suspect indeed admits to details that connect him with the offence. Later, during *Requests for reprints should be addressed to Pekka Santtila, Police College of Finland, P.O. Box 13, 02151 Espoo, Finland.

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