Suspicion: Behaviors That Lead to 911 Callers Becoming Suspects

Determining what leads to a 911 caller being perceived as suspicious is crucial. Confirmation bias can be detrimental to an investigation, particularly when the suspect is innocent. Law enforcement are engaging in unreliable 911 analysis techniques when investigating violent crimes, which can exacerbate this confirmation bias against innocent suspects and lead to wrongful convictions. Little is known about what leads to someone being targeted as a suspect in an investigation, so previous studies in our lab sought to find common behavioral indicators that predict suspicion for 911 callers. In this study, participants heard eight 911 calls and gave their impressions of each caller based on these behavioral indicators. We replicated many of the findings from these previous studies; callers perceived as more verbally fluent, under greater cognitive load, and engaging in information and impression management were more suspicious, while callers perceived as more urgent for the victim and emotional were less suspicious. The caller’s gender did not have a moderating impact on perceived suspicion with regards to emotionality. The significant negative relationship between perceived emotionality of the caller and suspicion was significantly stronger when they knew the victim relative to when they did not know the victim. Of note, callers deemed suspicious in this study were not necessarily guilty of the crime they were reporting. When law enforcement use behavioral cues to form suspicion and determine a caller's guilt, it can lead to downstream consequences for wrongful convictions.