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Person. in&d.
Dt$T, Vol. IO. No. 5. pp. 535-540,
Pnnred in Great Britain. All rights reserved

COMPLIANCE

1989
Copyright

IN AN INTERROGATIVE
A NEW SCALE

0191-8869,89 53.00 + 0.00
C 1989 Pergamon Press plc

SITUATION:

GISLI H. GUDJONSSON
Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill.
London SES 8AF, England
(Received 20 May 1988)
Summary-This
paper describes the development of a new compliance questionnaire which is intended to
complement the present author’s previous work into interrogative suggestibility. The questionnaire consists
of 20 true-false statements which have particular application to interrogative situations involving retracted
confession statements. The questionnaire has satisfactory internal consistency and test-retest reliability.
Data are presented which support the concurrent and construct validity of the questionnaire.

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a compliance questionnaire which, theoretically and
empirically, complements the previous work of the present author into interrogative suggestibility.
After laying the foundations for the work on interrogative suggestibility (Gudjonsson and Gunn,
1982; Gudjonsson, 1983), Gudjonsson (1984) presented the development and early validation of a
suggestibility scale that could be used to assess the individual’s responses to “leading questions” and
“negative feedback” instructions when being asked to report a factual event from recall. The scale
was constructed to be applicable to legal contexts, such as police officers’ questioning of witnesses
to crime and interrogation of criminal suspects. It employs a narrative paragraph describing a
fictitious mugging, which is read out to subjects. They are then asked to report all they can recall
about the story. About 50 minutes later delayed recall is again obtained, after which subjects are
asked 20 specific questions about the story. Fifteen of the questions are deliberately misleading and
five act as “buffer” items to disguise the real purpose of the test. “Negative feedback” is then given,
indicating to the subjects that they should try harder to be more accurate. The 20 questions are then
repeated and any changes from the previous answers are carefully monitored. The scale is intended
to measure individual differences in the tendency to yield to leading questions, and secondly,
to monitor how readily subjects’ previous answers can be shifted in response to criticism or
interpersonal presssure.
The original scale, labelled the “Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale” (GSS l), stimulated a considerable amount of research and resulted in the development of a theoretical model of suggestibility in
police interrogation (Gudjonsson and Clark, 1986). Gudjonsson (1987) constructed a parallel form
(the GSS 2), which correlated very highly with the scores of the original scale and provided evidence
for high “temporal consistency” of interrogative suggestibility over time.
Gudjonsson and Clark (1986) define interrogative suggestibility as “the extent to which, within
a closed social interaction, people come to accept messages communicated during formal questioning, as the result of which their subsequent behavioural response is affected.” This definition implies
certain distinguishing features which differentiate interrogative suggestibility from general compliance. First, interrogative suggestibility involves a questioning procedure related to past experiences
and events. Second, it has a significant relationship with the cognitive processing capacity and
functioning of the individual. It correlates highly significantly with both memory and intelligence,
particularly at the lower range (Gudjonsson, 1988a). Third, the acceptance of the suggestion offered
by the interrogator is a crucial factor in the suggestion process. That is, the message must be
perceived by the respondents as being plausible and credible. The main difference between
interrogative suggestibility and compliance is that the latter does not require a personal acceptance
of the proposition or request. The individual makes a conscious decision to carry out the behaviour
requested, which he or she may or may not agree with privately. Within the context of the present
paper, of particular importance is the general tendency or susceptibility of individuals to comply

536

GISLI

H.

GLDJOSSOK

with requests and obey instructions
that they would rather not do, for some immediate instrumental
gain. Being able to measure this type of compliance
would have at least two distinct applications.
First, it would complement
the contribution
that the objective assessment of interrogative
suggestibility can make in cases of alleged false confession. For example, the “coerced-compliant”
type of
false confession described in the literature appears more related to compliance
than suggestibility
(Gudjonsson
and MacKeith.
1988). These are the people who claim to have been fully aware that
they were confessing to things that they had not done, but did so, for example. in order to relieve
the pressure concerning the immediate situation. Second, in criminal cases, where there is more than
one offender, allegations
are sometimes made that an offender was somehow “coerced” or “led”
into criminal activity by a more forceful accomplice. A general tendency towards compliance
may
make a person particularly
susceptible
to exploitation
by another. This susceptibility
can only
indirectly be assessed by suggestibility
scales.
In view of the above, a compliance questionnaire
would complement
the work that has been done
on interrogative
suggestibility.
Although
the processes involved in suggestibility
and compliance
undoubtedly
differ in several respects, some of the mediating variables, such as eagerness to please
and avoidance behaviour, are probably common to both suggestibility
and compliance (Gudjonsson
and Clark, 1986). As suggestibility
and compliance are construed as overlapping
rather than distinct
personality
characteristics
they would be expected to be correlated
to a certain extent. This is
particularly
the case with regard to shift, as measured by the GSS 1 and GSS 2, since that aspect
of interrogative
suggestibility
most strongly relates to perceptions of pressure (Gudjonsson,
1988b).
CONSTRUCTION

OF

THE

QUESTIONNAIRE

Twenty-eight
items were selected for the true-false questionnaire
format. These were chosen on
the basis of their conceptual and theoretical relevance to compliant behaviour.
It was hypothesised
that the two main components
to compliant
behaviour are: (i) eagerness to please and the need to
protect one’s self-esteem when in the company of others (Konoske, Staple and Graf, 1979); and (ii)
the avoidance of conflict and confrontation
and fear of people in authority (Irving and Hilgendorf,
1980). When either or both of these two components
are present, people may on occasions comply
with requests and obey intructions
which they would ordinarily
reject.
The questionnaire
was administered
to 164 subjects (81 males and 83 females) and the 28 items
were subsequently
factor analysed using principal component
analysis. Twenty of the items had a
loading of above 0.25 and these were used to make up the final questionnaire.
Seventeen of the items
were keyed True for a compliance response and three (items 17-19) were keyed False. The questions
and their factor loadings are given in Appendix I. The items having the highest loading clearly relate
to the person’s ability not to give in when pressured to do so. Unfortunately,
several of the original
items keyed False for compliance
loaded poorly in the principal component
analysis.
The 20 items were rotated using Varimax procedure.
Three factors were extracted in order to
identify different components
of compliant
behaviour.
The factors and their loadings are given in
Table 1.
Factor 1, which comprises ten items, clearly relates to the difficulties the subject has in coping
with pressure. This seems to reflect fear and apprehension
when in the company of authority figures
and avoidance
behaviour
(i.e. avoidance
of conflict and confrontation).
Factor 2, comprises five
items and reflects the eagerness of the subject to please and to do what is expected of him or her.
Factor 3 is also made up of five items, but the loadings are rather modest and this factor is rather
obscure. It includes the three items that are keyed False for a compliance
response.
The Alpha coefficient consistency
for the 20 items was 0.71. The test-retest
reliability
of the
20-item questionnaire
was measured by administering
the questionnaire
twice, l-3 months apart,
to 20 forensic patients at the Bethlem and Maudsley
Royal Hospitals.
The Pearson correlation
between the two sets of scores was 0.88 (P < 0.001).
ValidiIy
The construct
validity of the questionnaire
was tested by comparing
the normative
scores of
different groups of subjects. It was hypothesised
that a minority
group such as alleged false
confessors to serious crimes would score higher on the compliance questionnaire
than, for example,

Compliance in an interrogative
Table

I. Varimax

rotated

factor
scale

matnx

situation

537

of the compliance

Factor
Item
I

6
8
9
IO
II
I2
13
14
15
I6
I7
I8
I9
20

I
0.56
0.57
0.64
0.40
0.68
0.23
0.31
0.49
0.5 I
0.08
0.50
0.22
0.34
0.40
0.40
0.17
0.04
- -0.15
- -0.13
0.12

2
0.20
0.12
0.08

0.19
.0.09
0.61
0.49
0.03
0.2 I
0.63
0.04
0.64
0.29
0.21
0.29
0.72
-0.27
0.02
0. I7
0.10

3
0.28
0.28
0.17
0.48
0.22
0.09
-0.04
0.25
-0.13
0.22
0.12
-0.22
0.04
0.05
-0.34
0.22
-0.53
-0.47
-0.57
0.28

University students and academic staff; the reason being that the former had a history of having
made an alleged false confession during police interviewing. Similarly, criminal suspects known to
have been able to resist making self-incriminating statements during questioning, in spite of forensic
evidence against them, would be expected to be least compliant. Data were also collected for other
groups of subjects for normative purposes. The mean and standard deviation scores for nine
different groups of subjects are given in Table 2. The groups were as follows:
(1) Fifty-five criminal suspects or convicted offenders (50 males and 5 females) who had made
self-incriminating admissions during police questioning which they subsequently retracted. The
cases were referred for assessment by defence of prosecution solicitors. Their mean age was 32 years
(SD = 11.9).
(2) Forty-eight criminal suspects or convicted offenders (40 males and 8 females) who had been
referred for assessment because of pending court proceedings. None of them alleged to have made
a false confession. They had a mean age of 36 years (SD = 11.6).
(3) Fifty prisoners (all males), serving sentences for various types of criminal offences. Their mean
age was 37 years (SD = 10.3).
(4) Seventy-two student nurses (14 males and 58 females), with a mean age of 25 years
(SD = 10.6).
(5) Fifty-six medical students (27 male and 29 females), with a mean age of 20 years (SD = 1.2).
(6) Forty-one academic staff in a University setting (21 males and 20 females), with a mean age
of 30 years (SD = 7.8).
(7) Fifty-one University students (26 males and 25 females), with a mean age of 25 years
(SD = 7.5).
(8) Twenty-eight male soldiers with a mean age of 21 years (SD = 3.5).
(9) Thirteen criminal suspects (11 males and 2 females) who did not make self-incriminating
admissions to the police during extensive questioning, but they were subsequently convicted, largely
it seemed, on the bases of some forensic evidence. This group will be referred to in this paper as
“resisters”.
The compliance questionnaire was presented to the subjects as a personality test and was
completed on a voluntary basis.
Two-way ANOVA (by sex and group membership) indicates a significant overall difference in the
scores or the different groups (F = 17.14, df = 8413, P < O.OOl), but there was no significant sex
effect (F = 1.41, df = 1413, P NS).
The compliance questionnaire was correlated with a number of other tests in order to test its
concurrent and construct validity. The following tests were administered to some of the subjects in
addition to the Compliance Questionnaire: (1) The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-R;

GISLI H. CL-DJONSS~~

538

Table 3. Pearson correlilt~ons between compliance
vartables
Variable
Table

2. Mean

and standard

deviarmn
groups

Group

.I

Alleged false confessors
Other forensic cases
Prisoners
Soldiers
Student nurses
Medical students
Academic staff
University students
Resisters

55
48
50
2s
72
56
41
51
13

01erall

score

414

scores for seven enper~menral
Men
14.4

SD

II.0
IO 6
91
9.1
7.9
7.8
6.8

3.1
4.6
5.2
2.4
3.6
3.3
3.4
4.1
2.3

IO.1

4.6

Il.3

.V

Age

IQ (WAIS-R)
4ldOW-C*OWIl~

EPQ

Psychoticism
EXlraverSiOfl
Neuroticism
Lie
Suggestibility (GSS I)
Yield
Shift
Total suggestibility
Social Conformity
Acauiescence
‘P

< 0.05:

369
139
125
61
61
61
61
II9
119
II9
68
57

and other

COrrcllllOll
0.10

0.0s
0.35-9
-0.1s
-0.02
0.27'
0.05
0.40.'

0.539.
O.S5**
0.5-l**
0.28’

l*P < 0.001.

Wechsler, 1981). This test was administered to some of the forensic cases only; (2) the MarlowCrowne test of social desirability (Crowne and Marlowe, 1960). This test was administered to
subjects in Groups 1,2,6 and 7; (3) the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Eysenck and Eysenck,
1975). The EPQ was administered to subjects in Groups 1 and 2; (4) The Gudjonsson Suggestibility
Scale (Gudjonsson, 1984). The GSS was administered to subject in Groups 1,2 and 6; (5) The Social
Conformity Scale (Pettigrew, 1958); This test was administered to subjects in Group 4: (6) The
Acquiescence Scale (Winkler, Kanouse, and Ware, 1982). This test was administered to subjects in
Groups 1 and 2 only.
Theoretically, it was expected that compliance would correlate positively with social conformity,
social desirability, acquiescence and neuroticism, and negatively with psychoticism. No specific
hypothesis was formulated with respect to IQ, but it was important to investigate a possible
relationship with IQ for the following reason. IQ correlates to a moderate extent with interrogative
suggestibility which makes theoretical sense in view of the nature of the scale (Gudjonsson, 1988a).
Since compliance is not related to memory processes like suggestibility it should not correlate with
IQ to the same extent.
The Pearson correlations between compliance and the other variables are shown in Table 3.
Most of the hypotheses were confirmed. Compliance correlated most strongly with Social
Conformity and Interrogative Suggestibility, and to a lesser extent with Social Desirability. It is
interesting that the EPQ Lie score did not correlate significantly with compliance whereas the
Marlow-Crowne score did. Psychoticism, Extraversion, IQ and age did not correlate significantly
with the compliance score.
DISCUSSION
The purpose of the present paper is to introduce a new compliance questionnaire, which has
particular application to the assessment of forensic cases. The questionnaire, which consists of
20 true-false statements, has reasonable internal consistency and test-retest reliability. The only
problem with the construction of the questionnaire was the poor loading in the factor analysis on
items which were keyed False as a compliance response. Since most of the items in the final questionnaire are keyed True for a compliance response an acquiescent response set may not be adequately
controlled for. In the present study compliance did correlate significantly with acquiescence, but the
correlation is quite low and consistent with what one might expect without a specific acquiescence
bias (Gudjonsson, 1986). The items which have the highest factor loadings on the questionnaire
indicate that it is primarily measuring how subjects report reacting when pressured by people,
especially by those in authority. Conceptually, this makes the questionnaire particularly relevant to
the “coerced-compliant”
type of alleged false confession (Gudjonsson and MacKeith, 1988). The
fact that highly compliant subjects express awareness of their difficulties in coping with pressures
when in the company of authority figures, makes the compliance questionnaire more similar to
Milgram’s (1974) construct of “obedience to authority” than “conformity to group pressure” as
described by Asch (1951).

Compliance in an interrogative situation

539

The highly significant correlation between the compliance questionnaire and Social Conformity
as measured by Pettigrew’s (1958) scale, supports the concurrent validity of the questionnaire.
Construct validity is supported by the fact that the questionnaire was able to discriminate
significantly between different target groups. Alleged false confessors scored highest on the
questionnaire, as predicted, whereas University students and academic staff scored low. Lowest
scores were found among the “resisters”. Students of the helping professions, that is, student nurses
and medical students, obtained higher scores than University staff and students, but lower than
prisoners and forensic cases.
The significant correlations beween the compliance and suggestibility scores supports the view
provided in the introduction that there is a certain overlap between the two constructs. Although
there are clear differences, as discussed in the introduction, the findings point to similar mediating
variables. Of particular interest are avoidance coping, eagerness to please and social desirability, and
certain anxiety factors associated with how individuals cope with pressure (Gudjonsson, 1988b).
Although there is a significant relationship between the compliance questionnaire and the social
conformity scale, neither instrument measures “prosocial behaviour” as such and they cannot give
any indication about criminal tendencies. Rather, these instruments measure how subjects are likely
to yield to pressures by others, irrespective of their criminality. Compliance is therefore likely to be
associated with the lack of assertiveness and low “potency scores” as measured by the semantic
differential technique of Osgood, Soci and Tannebaum (1957). This probably explains why
compliance was found to be quite high among some of the prisoners, a group that can hardly be
described as socially conforming. Certain personality traits, such as Psychoticism as measured by
the EPQ, would be expected to have some negative relationship with compliance, because it
indicates suspiciousness and general unto-operativeness
(Eysenck and Eysenck, 1975). Nevertheless, no significant negative correlation was found between compliance and Psychoticism in the
present study. One possible explanation is that the subjects’ true Psychoticism score was in many
instances suppressed by the subjects’ high Lie scores. The mean Lie score for Groups 1 and 2 (i.e.
the two forensic groups) was 10.2 (SD = 4.8) which is higher than that found among ordinary
prisoners (Eysenck and Eysenck, 1975). In a future study, the true relationship between compliance
and Psychoticism needs to be investigated in a population that does not have elevated Lie scores.
The high Lie score among the forensic cases and alleged false confessors may have been partly due
to the circumstances under which they were being tested (i.e. for court report purposes).
It is hoped that the compliance questionnaire is going to complement the previous work into
interrogative suggestibility. Its advantage is that it does not, unlike interrogative suggestibility,
correlate significantly with IQ. This indicates that it is more of a personality rather than a cognitive
measure. In addition, it is a direct self-report measure of subjects’ susceptibility when under pressure
to comply with requests and obey instructions which they would ordinarily reject. Interrogative
suggestibility, on other hand, is a more direct measure of susceptibility to erroneous testimony. Both
types of behaviours are relevant to how subjects cope with the demand characteristics of police
interviewing and custody.
The major advantage of suggestibility, as measured by the GSS 1 or GSS 2, is that it is a
behavioural measure (i.e. it reflects behaviour during a standard experimental paradigm) and is not
dependent upon self-report like the compliance questionnaire. This makes it resistant to self-report
bias and possible faking. Ideally, compliance should also be measured by a standard experimental
paradigm, but for practical and ethical reasons this would be very difficult to achieve within the
framework, of a paradigm that has forensic applications. A self-report questionnaire provides a
reasonable compromise to a very important area of forensic psychology.
Acknowledgemenrs-The
author is gratefulto the followingpeoplewho assistedwiththe administrationof the compliance
questionnaireto someof the groupsof subjects:Miss Karin Gray. Miss Maggy Hilton, Mrs Freda Steuart-Pownall and Mrs
Caroline Stewart. I also acknowledge the help of Miss Juliet May with the preliminary analyses of the questionnaire and
Mr John Roscoe who carried out some of the statistical analyses.

REFERENCES
Asch S. E. (1951) Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgement. In Groups. Leadership and
Men (Edited by Guetzkan H.). Carnegie Press, Pittsburg, Pa.
Crowne D. P. and Marlowe D. (1960) A new scale of social desirability independent of psychopathology. J. consulf. Psychol.
24, 349-354.

540

GE.LI H. GUDJONSSIN

Eysenck H. J. and Eysenck S. B. G. (1975) .Manuaf of the Eysenck Personality Queslionnaire. Hodder & Stoughton,
London.
Gudjonsson
G. H. (1983) Suggestibility.
intelligence, memory recall and personality:
an experimental
study. Br. J. Psychiar.
142, 3537.
Gudjonsson
G. H. (1984) A new scale of interrogative
suggestibility
Person. indirid. 013 5, 303-314.
Gudjonsson
G. H. (1986) The relationship
between interrogative
suggestibility
and acquiescence:
empirical findings and
theoretical implications.
Person. indicid. LX% 7, 195-199.
Gudjonsson
G. H. (1987) A parallel form of the Gudjonsson
Suggestibility
Scale. Br. J. clin. Psychol. 26, 215-221.
Gudjonsson
G. H. (1988a) The relationship
of intelligence and memory to interrogative
suggestibility:
the importance
of
range effects. Br. J. clin. Psychol. 27, 185-187.
Gudjonsson
G. H. (1988b) Interrogative
suggestibility
and its relationship
with assertiveness,
social anxiety. fear of negative
evaluation and methods of coping. Br. J. c/in. Psychol. 27, 159-166.
Gudjonsson
G. H. and Clark N. K. (1986) Suggestibility
in police interrogation:
a social psychological
model. Social Behav.
1,83-104.
Gudjonsson
G. H. and Gunn J. (1982) The competence and reliability of a witness in a criminal court: a case report. Brirish
Journal of Psychiatry, 141, 624-627.
Gudjonsson
G. H. and MacKeith J. A. C. (1988) Retracted confessions:
Legal, psychological
and psychiatric aspects. Med.,
Sci. Law. 2B,_187-194.
Irving B. and Hilgendorf
L. (1980) Police interrogation.
The psychological
approach.
Research S~dy ,Vo. 1. H.M.S.O..
London.
Konoske P., Staple S. and Graf R. G. (1979) Compliant
reactions to guilt: self-esteem or self-punishment.
J. Social Psycho/.
108, 207-21 I.
Milgram S. (1974) Obedience IO Aulhority. Tavistock Publications.
London.
Osgood C. E., Soci G. J. and Tannebaum
P. (1957) The Meusuremenr of Meaning. Univ. of Illinois Press. 111.
Pettigrew T. F. (1958) Personality
and sociocultural
factors in intergroup
attitudes: a cross-national
comparison.
Confl.
Resol. 11, 29-42.
Wechsler D. (1981) The Psychological CorporarionlHarcourt
Brace Jovanovich. WAIS-R Manual. New York.
Winkler J. D., Kanouse D. E. and Ware J. E. (1982) Controlling
for acquiescence
response set in scale development.
J. appt.
Psychol. 67, 555-561.

APPENDIX

1

Content and Facror Loadings on the Compliance

I.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
IO.
II.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.

Questionnaire

I give in easily to people when I am pressured
I find it very difficult to tell people when I disagree with them
People in authority
make me feel uncomfortable
and uneasy
I tend to give in to people who insist that they are right
I tend to become easily alarmed and frightened when I am in the company of people
I try very hard not to offend people in authority
I would describe myself as a very obedient person
I tend to go along with what people tell me even when I know that they are wrong
I believe in avoiding rather than facing demanding
and frightening
situations
I try to please others
Disagreeing
with people often takes more time than it is worth
I generally believe in doing as I am told
When I am uncertain about things I tend to accept what people tell me
I generally try to avoid confrontation
with people
As a child I always did what my parents told me
I try hard to do what is expected of me
I am not too concerned about what people think of me
I strongly resist being pressured to do things I don’t want to do
I would never go along with what people tell me in order to please them
When I was a child I sometimes took the blame for things I had not done

in authority

Loading
0.64
0.61
0.60
0.57
0.56
0.52
0.48
0.48
0.47
0.46
0.45
0.43
0.43
0.41
0.35
0.3 I
-0.29
-0.27
-0.26
0.25



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