ABSTRACT
Psychological research on examining witnesses has a long tradition in Germany. In 1903, William Stern founded a journal entitled Beiträge zur Psychologie der Aussage (Contributions to the Psychology of Testimony), and in 1904 he wrote a landmark article entitled “Die Aussage als geistige Leistung und Verhörsprodukt” [“Testimony as a mental achievement and a result of interview tactics”). More than 100 years ago, he had already distinguished between free narrative and questioning and found that free narratives contained fewer errors than the answers given to questions posed during an interview. Stern found this to be true for statements by both children and adults. However, the negative impact of leading questions was more pronounced in children’s statements as children are more susceptible than adults. Hence the idea that the way interviews are conducted can exert a substantial influence on witness and suspect statements has been around for more than a century in Germany. Recommendations on how to design the interview format to obtain as much information as possible by using a free narrative style and open questions were already formulated more than 40 years ago (e.g. Arntzen, 1970).
