evaluating-the-benefits-of-a-rapport-bas

name	evaluating-the-benefits-of-a-rapport-bas
description	Apply rapport-based elicitation to resistant or semi-cooperative humans and agents. Use when coercive prompting or brittle handoffs damage cooperation. NOT for routine cooperative tasks, pure technical debugging, or already reliable exchanges.
license	Apache-2.0
allowed-tools	["Read","Write","Edit","Glob","Grep"]
metadata	{"category":"Cognitive Science & Decision Making","tags":["rapport","interviewing","cooperation","resistance","elicitation","training"],"pairs-with":[{"skill":"rapport-based-elicitation","reason":"Use it when you need the broader practice surface around rapport-driven extraction and cooperation."},{"skill":"expert-knowledge-elicitation","reason":"Rapport is often the prerequisite for surfacing expert reasoning that resists direct extraction."}],"provenance":{"kind":"legacy-recovered","sourceDocument":"Evaluating the Benefits of a Rapport-Based Approach to Investigative Interviews: A Training Study With Law Enforcement Investigators","sourceAuthors":["Laure Brimbal","Christian A. Meissner","Steven M. Kleinman","Erik L. Phillips","Dominick J. Atkinson","Rachel E. Dianiska","Jesse N. Rothweiler","Simon Oleszkiewicz","Matthew S. Jones"],"sourceArtifact":".claude/skills/evaluating-the-benefits-of-a-rapport-bas/_book_identity.json","importedFrom":"legacy-recovery","owners":["some-claude-skills"]},"authorship":{"authors":["Laure Brimbal","Christian A. Meissner","Steven M. Kleinman","Erik L. Phillips","Dominick J. Atkinson","Rachel E. Dianiska","Jesse N. Rothweiler","Simon Oleszkiewicz","Matthew S. Jones"],"maintainers":["some-claude-skills"]}}

Evaluating the Benefits of a Rapport-Based Approach

Use this skill when the hidden problem is not lack of instructions but a damaged cooperation pathway. The doctrine here is simple: pressure can force words, but it cannot force truthful, high-yield disclosure.

When to Use

• A human or sub-agent is giving minimal, evasive, or suspiciously polished responses.
• Adding pressure, constraints, or accusation-like framing keeps making output worse.
• A handoff is failing because the receiver does not feel safe, prepared, or respected enough to cooperate.
• The system is over-trusting confidence signals instead of observed behavioral performance.
• You need to reason about why evidence or better tactics are not being adopted in resistant settings.

NOT for Boundaries

This skill is not the primary tool for:

• Straightforward cooperative tasks where the other party is already responsive and truthful.
• Pure technical root-cause analysis when the main problem is system state, not resistance or cooperation.
• Compliance regimes where the design requirement is rigid procedure execution rather than disclosure quality.
• Situations where the operator is looking for intimidation or output-forcing tactics instead of trustworthy information.

Core Mental Models

Coercion Corrupts the Channel

Pressure-based tactics often produce the worst kind of success: output that looks usable but is structurally contaminated by compliance pressure, guesswork, or fabrication.

Rapport Is a Mediated Causal Chain

The chain is tactic -> perceived rapport -> willingness to cooperate -> disclosure. If the cooperation step never forms, "more extraction pressure" is a category mistake.

The Layers Must Stack in Order

Foundation questioning comes first, conversational rapport second, relational rapport third. Skipping the lower layers and jumping to high-trust asks is a design failure, not a shortcut.

Self-Reported Capability Is Not Behavioral Capability

Practitioners and agents often say they understand the tactic while behaving as though they do not. Evaluate the behavior under pressure, not the self-description.

Decision Points

flowchart TD
  A[Low-yield or resistant interaction] --> B{Foundation questioning stable?}
  B -->|No| C[Fix open questions, listening, and narrative space]
  B -->|Yes| D{Perceived rapport improving?}
  D -->|No| E[Add autonomy support, empathy, adaptation]
  D -->|Yes| F{Cooperation threshold reached?}
  F -->|No| G[Use relational rapport and remove pressure signals]
  F -->|Yes| H[Request disclosure or higher-stakes detail]
  H --> I{Output plausible but suspect?}
  I -->|Yes| J[Check for pressure-induced fabrication and reset]
  I -->|No| K[Continue with calibrated follow-up]