The (in)authenticity of simulated interaction: Comparing role-played and ‘real’ interaction

In this talk, I will address questions about the authenticity or otherwise of simulated, role-played interaction. While role-play is pervasive in communication skills training contexts, and questions of authenticity do arise, there are, to the best of my knowledge, no studies that make a direct comparison between role-played and real talk. Drawing on real police interviews with real suspects (collected for a separate research project), and training interviews with actors playing suspects, I will show how actions (e.g., eliciting identification; reminding suspects of their rights to legal representation) are formulated and organized in both settings. Furthermore, I will show that although the same gross actions are accomplished in real and simulated interviews, they are accomplished in subtly different ways. I will discuss the implications of the analytic observations for role-play training more broadly, and also for interview methods in social science.