Security professionals from various fields, from security intelligence to cyber security, rely on their ability to quickly build rapport and secure the collaboration of their subjects during the very first engagement.
Failure to obtain their collaboration may result in the loss of critical information to prevent a terrorist attack for intelligence officers and fail a cybersecurity security assessment for social engineers.
Unfortunately, the training for these different fields is similar and focuses on influence or interviewing techniques instead of on the critical aspect of quickly building rapport.
This integrative literature review explores the role of empathy in recruiting assets in the security field. More specifically, how intergroup empathy bias can be used as a foundation during first interactions to generate empathy towards the agent and obtain the collaboration from their subjects.
Topics covered include the strength of the intergroup bias, how to apply empathy bias to known influence techniques, and how to use nonverbals to generate empathy. Using empathy bias is a novel concept for the security field that has direct applications for the training and development of agents. However, to explore this concept, it is also essential to consider the impact of stress on the subject.
To this end, this research includes the impacts of acute stress on the subject, identifies control mechanisms, and demonstrates how controlling stress can facilitate a successful approach using empathy bias as a foundation.
