Project Overview  

Psych-AID is a research network that uses psychological evidence to support the asylum process.  Our overall aim is to explore ways to develop the interview procedure and the credibility assessments to ensure fair and accurate procedures. Placing individuals into legal categories is a highly complex task, given the variability of human identity, experience, and behaviour. The cross-cultural dimension of asylum procedures introduces additional elements of complexity. Currently, asylum officials often rely on methods that are not based on psychological science, potentially compromising the validity of the asylum process.  To address this, we will adapt interviewing and decision-making methods specifically to the asylum context and develop training programs for European asylum officials.  

Our Mission 

In recent years, approximately one million individuals flee harm to apply for asylum in the EU and the UK. This situation has exposed Europe’s unpreparedness to evaluate large numbers of applicants and highlighted an urgent need for collaboration between researchers and legal practitioners. This collaboration should aim to devise efficient and valid asylum practices to support the integrity of the asylum system and guarantee the rights of applicants.  

Although the eligibility criteria for asylum are clearly defined, adjudicating asylum claims is a complex undertaking that is susceptible to errors. The UN Refugee Convention states that anyone with a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion” who is “unable or unwilling” to return to their country must be granted asylum. This legal definition is applied within the Common European Asylum System, which Finland adheres. The asylum procedure consists of four steps: The first step is to gather information about the asylum seekers’ claims. As there rarely is any external evidence (e.g., identity documents, warrants), information is usually collected in interviews with the asylum seeker. In a second step, this information is assessed by officials to decide which facts are credible. In the third step, a risk assessment is conducted to evaluate the applicants perceived risk of harm. In a final step, officials determine if the legal conditions for refugee status are met. To reach a correct conclusion, it is of paramount importance that the interview and decision-making methods are based on empirical research.  

 Asylum officials may struggle even more when interviewing particularly vulnerable applicants, such as individuals belonging to a persecuted social group. Social (e.g., sexual or religious) identity is not a visible trait and cannot conclusively be demonstrated through documentation, which further increases the need for skilled interviewing and decision-making.   

To support asylum decision-makers in addressing these challenges, we will adapt and empirically test interviewing and decision-making techniques to maximize the accuracy of asylum decisions. Courts will also benefit from these standards when re-evaluating first-instance asylum decisions, thus promoting applicants’ rights to fair appeals.  

Our Impact 

Despite the urgent need for evidence-based methods for asylum interviewing and decision-making, this research topic has been woefully ignored in legal psychology. There is a concerning lack of empirical studies investigating methods that can counteract risks that stem from psychological processes in the asylum procedure while considering the legal boundaries. Hence, our project has considerable potential for scientific breakthrough and renewal. The combination of experimental psychological studies and legal reasoning in asylum research has only recently gained momentum. Our multi-disciplinary team has played a crucial role in this, contributing to a large proportion of the internationally published work in this field. Our objective is to test and develop evidence-based interviewing and decision-making techniques to support the accuracy of asylum procedures by working across scientific disciplines.  

This research can influence both national and international policies and practices and have a lasting social impact. Our research has been met with enthusiasm by practitioners, such as the Finnish Immigration Service, with whom we have collaborated closely regarding both data collections and training programs. We have, for example, created, run, and evaluated the efficacy of a specialization course in legal psychology for Finnish asylum interviewers. Members of our team have had similar collaborations (i.e., material development, small-scale training) with asylum authorities in their respective countries. In this project, we continue our close collaboration with the authorities, such as the Finnish Immigration Service. This lets us ground the research in actual organizational requirements and priorities, provides access to valuable data (interview transcripts, decision protocols) and facilitates training practitioners. Our approach guarantees direct, widespread societal impact. To inform policy and legal practice, we also hope to disseminate our results to international authorities and stakeholders. To achieve this, the team’s expertise in asylum law is central.  

Our Research Questions 

Despite a large body of research having produced investigative interviewing and decision-making methods for the criminal context, it remains unclear how effective these are in the asylum context. Hence, it is therefore of vital importance that evidence-based methods for asylum interviewing and decision-making are established and implemented on a large scale. We will be the first research team to extensively test the hypothesis that adapting these methods to the cross-cultural asylum context can support the accuracy of asylum determinations. To do this, we will address the following research questions:  

i. How can existing interviewing techniques be adapted to asylum interviews to elicit detailed answers and positive credibility cues in cross-cultural settings?  

ii. How can existing criteria for credibility assessments of applicants’ claims be adapted to the asylum context to limit undue influence of officials’ within- and cross-cultural stereotypes and personal beliefs about human behaviour?  

iii. How can particularly vulnerable applicants (such as some members of sexual minorities) be interviewed, and their credibility be assessed?  

iv. Based on steps i-iii, we will develop novel standards against which any individual determination process can be evaluated in court, allowing courts to overturn decisions based on a flawed interview or credibility assessments. 

v. Create and test a training program for asylum officials and scale these internationally, which includes adapting novel software for interview training to the asylum context.