Most complaints against Loss Prevention investigations and interviewers include claims of unreasonable detainment times. Research suggests these folks aren’t lying and that they do truly perceive the interview as lasting too long.
Loss Prevention investigations and interviews have the potential to create liability. That liability is inversely proportional to the interviewer’s level of training, experience, and expertise. But even a seasoned interviewer can wind up in litigation.
The “Complaint” against an interviewer usually includes a claim of false imprisonment. Plenty of case law supports an employer’s right to question employees on issues of wrong-doing. But the length, location, and atmosphere of the questioning must be “reasonable.”
“Reasonable” is something that requires a review to determine. Consequently, claims of false imprisonment are an excellent method for obtaining a hearing on the matter.
Although claims of false imprisonment usually lack merit, science suggests the complainant may truly believe their “detention” was unreasonably long and arduous.
In other words, the former employee may not be just “making it up” to sue you. They may be suing you because in their perception you did detain them for a long time.
Understanding the difference between the perception of time and the linear calculation requires an understanding of how the brain calculates its passage and the effect of emotions on those calculations.
And knowing these things can help us avoid future misperceptions.
The Internal Time Keeper
Brain time is a more complicated process than the clock suggests. Both humans and animals have their own internal time keepers. And although we are just beginning to understand the exact mechanisms of our internal clocks, research has demonstrated it is a far more complex process than we imagined.
The brain uses several regions to calculate time. The process includes thousands of neurons firing at different rates and for different speeds. How, when, where, and the rate of firing all depend on the type of activities we’re engaged in.
In short, the brain’s time-keeping methods are more like the qualities of a rubber band, stretching and snapping with variation, than they are like the precise movement of a precision wrist watch.
Fear and Perception
Several studies demonstrate that trauma and fear alter our perceptions.
Think about that rubber band and imagine being asked to stretch it two inches, hold for five seconds, release it, and then repeat the process ten times. Simple enough. Now imagine doing the same task while sitting next to a hornet’s nest. It’s unlikely anyone would criticize your timing for being a bit off.
It’s accepted that fear can make time appear to speed up. People in accidents often report, “It all happened so fast.” But we can also experience the opposite perception. The moments when time slows down. Not a drastic as say in the Matrix, but enough for twenty minutes to feel like an hour and for forty to feel like two.
One of the most interesting studies on the slowed-time phenomenon involved participants falling from a significant height. The participants held a digital device that flashed a number on and off the screen. The number flashed at a rate that made it “impossible” to accurately read.
During the fall however, when the participants were in a highly frightened state, they became capable of accurately reading the number (I’d be too busy screaming but to each his own).
What the experiment suggests is that fear changes our perception of time in a very measurable way. If speed, time, and distance are all related, then this experiment demonstrates that since the flashing number remained at a constant rate, the participant’s ability to read that number must have been influenced by a change in time.
If we avoid the existential argument and agree that external time is more accurate than internal time, then we can agree that while time remains constant, fear influences our perception of its passage.
And that is the exact reason why interview time becomes an issue of liability. Fear is messing with all those rubber bands and you’re no longer working off the same time piece.
Fear and Executive Function
Fear is a survival emotion. Early humans didn’t need to do a lot of thinking when confronted by a hungry beast. In fact, thinking is the last thing needed. Survival was a matter of “stop considering and start running.”
One of fear’s key processes is to suspend executive function to make room for survival responses (the pen is mightier than the sword but not in the lion’s cage). Executive functions use a lot of energy for calculating, comparing, talking, and rationalizing. Sometimes that energy is better used for running, screaming, and tripping the guy next to you.
Today, we don’t spend much time running from hungry beasts. But we do spend a lot of time riding rollercoasters, bungie jumping, and seeing horror movies. Why do we do these things to ourselves? What joy do we find in being afraid?
Well, the suspension of the executive function provides relief. People often report a sense of being relaxed or being in almost a euphoric state after a fearful experience.
Short experiences of fear can feel somewhat like meditation because for a short time all of our “thinking and rationalizing” shuts off.
Fear and Interviews
An interview is obviously not the same as escaping a tiger, riding a rollercoaster, or seeing a horror movie. But for the interviewee the fear response can be the same. And that response triggers fight or flight.
Fight or flight evidence can be observed through their body language. They attempt to physically close us off by crossing legs and arms, they attempt “escape” by turning away, they may even resort to angry outburst to scare off the beast.
These are all just smaller versions of what one might do to avoid being eaten by a wild animal—scream, run, protect.
Fear responses put executive functions on stand-by while fear response chemicals pump into the brain. The result is all those rubber bands are not only changing their rhythm but the internal time interpretation they provide no longer match physical reality.
Simply put, time slows down and the interviewer becomes Agent Smith.
Can We Counter Neurology?
We can’t control the neurology of an interviewee. But we can use our interview style, process, and training to help them sort out their perceptions.
As Wicklander & Zulawski teaches, hope is an effective method for getting to the truth. Having hope is the way most of us combat fear and worry.
Taking the interviewee from a place of fear, “I’m in trouble” to hope “there is a way to resolve this” changes the interviewee’s perception of the event. The interviewer is no longer the beast (or Agent Smith) but instead becomes an advocate for resolution.
And as fear recedes, rational perception returns along with external reality’s clock.
Of course, not all dishonest people wish to confess. And the longer they fight responsibility, the more fear they experience, and the more likely their perception of time falls out of sync.
Facts Can Counter Perceptions
In their perception the interview did go on forever. They did “feel” imprisoned. And the only way to overcome those perceptions is with objective facts.
The best counter method is the use of a “time-in, time-out” interview document. Ideally, the interviewee would write those times using their own watch, phone, or the wall clock as the measurement. The simple process of documenting the facts, in this case time, will override their misperceptions.
Some, of course, will not wish to participate, or may leave the room before completion. It’s still critical to document the time by using a witness to initial the recorded time in and out. This method may not avoid a complaint, but it will factually resolve any questions related to the length of the interview.
Most important is to employ a concise, practiced, and professional interview process. This ensures there is no merit to claims of an unreasonable interview length.
What’s reasonable?
It varies by event, participation, and milestones. But some simple guidelines are:
• Twenty minutes should get you to the accusation.
• Another fifteen or twenty to either develop the admission or restate your rationalizations.
• And another twenty to thirty if the individual is writing out a statement.
If you do the math, it stops being a one-sided conversation at around twenty minutes and you either have their cooperation or you don’t by the forty-minute mark.
The interviewer doesn’t have control over the speed at which the interviewee writes. It could take them an hour, or it could take five minutes. That part is less important than how much time was spent in the actual discussion. So, it can be helpful to note the time they begin writing.
Interview times are not a perfect science and there are no set rules or laws governing what is reasonable. But if you’ve been talking at a person for forty-five minutes with no results, it’s probably time to back out.
The interviewee may still walk away with invalid perceptions of the event, but it is also highly unlikely anyone will consider a documented forty-five-minute discussion that involved a critical business matter was “unreasonably” long.
By Raymond Esposito
