Did you make any bad decisions when you were a teenager? Some of you (the lucky ones) are of the generation that these choices weren’t captured in a TikTok video or a Facebook post. Falling victim to peer pressure, making impulsive decisions, taking uncalculated risks—we’ve all experienced the developmental stages of youth and maturity. However, as investigators, do we consider that when interviewing people of a younger age?
The investigative interview is complex, incorporating investigative findings and collecting background information to prepare an effective strategy to obtain reliable information. Interviews in the corporate environment may include cases of fraud, employee relations issues, workplace violence, or even safety inspections and threat assessments. Within these investigations, loss prevention professionals may have conversations with customers, employees, or vendors—all of which may be victims, witnesses, or suspects. There are multiple variables that impact the strategy of the interview and the evaluation of the information obtained.
To add another variable to the list, interviewees may have other characteristics that should be considered by the investigator. Past traumatic experiences, limited intellectual capacity, mental health, and environmental factors can all impact the effectiveness of an interview and the risk of obtaining inaccurate information. Another variable that investigators must consider is the developmental progress of the interviewee—more simply defined as “age.”
Age Is More Than a Number
What qualifies us as an “adult” when we reach eighteen years of age? There is no sudden shift that happens overnight which tells our brain to make better decisions or act accordingly. We take no exam to measure our ability to make rational and sound decisions to certify us. However, we seem to have defined a threshold based on age for several “milestone” permissions in our lives. Maybe this age is eighteen in certain contexts (like voting) or twenty-one for purchasing alcohol, or the coveted twenty-five when you can book a rental car without an “adult” cosigning their life away. To ensure consistency and provide some direction, many policies and legal statutes need a definitive number to separate “youth” from “adult.” In the corporate environment, most organizations have policies that also use age as a qualifier for certain job roles or accommodations.
These transitional phases tend to go by different labels as well, including minor, juvenile, and adolescent. Although most of these categories and milestone birthdays are defined by a number, psychologists have identified that our emotional, social, and cognitive developmental stages are a bit more complex than that. The stigma around the term “adolescent” immediately brings to mind the rude, entitled teenager who acts impulsively, defies their parents, and records TikTok videos without the awareness of life happening around them. However, there’s more to it than just the desire to be liked or lack of maturity. Leading scientists in the field of developmental psychology have identified several contributors to this behavior, including the impact of our prefrontal cortex on the maturation process. Without diving too deep into the neurons and protons, we can summarize the research literature by understanding that our transition from childhood to adulthood is not as definitive as a birthday. Instead, the research suggests that although we each develop at a different pace, adolescence is generally defined as the ages of 10-25, and most people reach the status of “adulthood” (in a developmental sense) around the age of twenty-five.
Developmental Concerns
As we have all experienced, youth are more likely to seek stimulating environments and experiences—which also increases their exposure to making poor decisions. In this developmental stage of life, youth are less able to control impulses, less likely to plan head, and are more sensitive to pressure from peers. Many factors can impact youth decision-making, including stress levels, fear, their physical state, and the presence of peers. The need for immediate gratification and the increased suggestibility of youth are not the only things to consider, but they are two main areas which investigators must be aware of.
Everyone is doing it! We have all experienced peer pressure in some form, whether it’s smoking your first cigarette, having your first sip of alcohol, skipping school, or doing something that you can blame on your friends. The impact of peer pressure has only grown stronger with the availability of social media. Posting a picture, a video, or a tweet may provide immediate gratification with “likes,” “comments,” and increased followers. However, that off-color post may have a significant impact when it resurfaces during a background check for employment years later. This balance of understanding the long-term impact of a decision versus the immediate perceived benefit comes with developmental maturity.
People in a youthful developmental stage are often more likely to seek immediate gratification while ignoring or being unaware of the reality of the longer-term impact of their decisions. Not only does this make young people more vulnerable to making poor, impulsive decisions in the workplace, but it also creates a risky environment when being interviewed. Youthful people may have a greater likelihood to provide information (true or false) to an interviewer, with the goal of being able to escape the pressure of the interview itself. The immediate gratification of escaping the discomfort or inconvenience of the interview contributes to this behavior. As we develop, we become more focused on the rational decision-making process to disclose information, including its impact on other people and the consequences we would face.
In addition to impulsivity, youth are also highly suggestible and (although it may not seem like it) more likely to be compliant with people of authority. To put this to the test, I used my nephew as a test subject in a recent experiment. He was on his way to school (hitching a ride with Grandma) when a pickup truck struck the side of their car, causing the side-view mirror to fly off the vehicle. Later in the week, knowing that everyone was okay, I took the opportunity to use my interview skills on the little guy. Starting with an open-ended question, I let him provide the narrative of what he recalled from the event. However, for research purposes, I wanted to see how suggestible he would be if I provided some leading questions and corrective statements.
“Are you sure it wasn’t a red truck that hit the car?”
“Grandma probably said some bad words after it happened, didn’t she?”
It was amazing how easy it was to alter his memory of the event or at least impact the version of the story he was committing to. Although my nephew is younger, the power of suggestion is relevant to adolescence as well. Now, this example didn’t have any profound impact—and the elements of trauma also existed—but it still demonstrated how easy it is to create a situation where the interviewee alters their story in response to criticism or leading statements from the investigator.
The research supports this theory as psychologists have found that youth are more suggestible and will also become more compliant to negative responses from authority figures. Suggestibility, or the heightened response to influence, can be seen in an interview where youth change their stories in response to misleading information or investigator pressure. Outdated tactics—like lying about the existence of evidence—may have a significant impact on altering a youth’s story. An interviewee may claim they locked the deposit in the safe at the close of business. However, if the investigator fabricates evidence and states that video surveillance confirms they left the safe open, a youthful interviewee may alter their story based on the suggestion. The reliability of the resulting statement is now uncertain, as it may be a truthful assertion, or it could simply be the result of suggestive questioning.
There are a number of risks associated with interviewing youth and relying on the resulting information. This, of course, does not mean that this part of the investigation should be avoided—rather, there needs to be additional scrutiny and training on the process itself. In the process of creating and implementing a policy around interviewing youthful people in the private sector, we recommend first working through the following questions:
- What is the involvement of parents/guardians in the process?
- How do we communicate voluntariness or other advisements at the beginning of the interview?
- What direction do we have to ensure consistency in the disposition of cases?
- How do we communicate the cautions of interviewing youth to our team, consistently and effectively?
- What process do we have to evaluate the interviews of youthful people and provide feedback to the organization or interviewer?
There are various things to consider when designing a policy around interviewing youthful employees. Step one would be to identify this as a need in the first place. Many organizations are still in their infancy of recognizing the need to create protocols around interviewing people who may be vulnerable—age being one of these qualifiers. LP professionals should work collaboratively with their human resources and legal teams to ensure that any policy implementation is consistent with company culture and relevant labor laws.