DISCRIMINACIÓN Y COMUNICACIÓN VERBAL DEL ESTADO EMOCIONAL

The diagram is a plan of the Management Suite on the first floor of a firm’s premises. Some money, in a brown envelope, has gone missing from the safe, and an investigation is underway.

General facts

Three people are employed in the Management Suite:

• the manager (Mrs Mann)

• the deputy manager (Mr Depp)

• the secretary (Rita).

Only the manager knows the safe combination.

Secretary’s evidence

‘I took the manager her morning coffee at 9.30. I noticed the safe was open and the brown package was visible inside it. I took her the mail at 10.00 and it was still open. Immediately after that the manager left her office and went straight along the corridor. She was away about 20 minutes. Mr Depp, the deputy manager, came out of his own office and visited the manager’s office twice that morning: once at about 9.45 and again while the manager was away – I couldn’t say the exact time.’

Manager’s evidence

‘I was away from the office for about 20 minutes. I didn’t lock the safe. I quite often don’t lock it in the daytime, and nothing has ever gone missing before. I am fairly certain the deputy manager’s door was open and his office was empty when I left, and it was still empty when I returned. It was when I got back that I realised the money was missing.’

Deputy manager’s evidence

‘I went into the manager’s office only once, and she was there at her desk. At around 10.00 I went to the canteen because there was a driver who had a problem to discuss – an argument he had had with another worker. It took over half an hour to sort out.’

Driver’s evidence

‘I was with Mr Depp in the canteen from around 10.00. We talked for quite a long time. I didn’t notice how long. We were sorting out a personal problem.’

Following on from the discussions in the previous chapter, assess the evidence given above. Use it to ask yourself who, if anyone, is not telling the truth.

Activity

talk to the driver. They are both normal, unsurprising events in a typical office day, and there is no obvious reason to believe one rather than the other. It is only because they conflict that we would question them at all. But since they do conflict, we have to question them.

Corroboration

Where Depp’s statement scores over Rita’s is that it gets some measure of corroboration both from the driver and from the manager herself. Rita has no witnesses or circumstances to corroborate her counter-claim. However, the corroborating evidence is not 100% solid. The manager says that she is ‘fairly certain’ the deputy manager’s door was open and his office was empty when she left. The driver, too, gives rather vague estimates: ‘I was with Mr Depp . . . around 10.00. We talked for quite a long time.’ Conceivably, by this reckoning, the meeting could have ended in time for Depp to go back to his offices before Mrs Mann returned. So, although the corroboration of two other witnesses adds to Depp’s credibility, it does not by any means remove all doubt about his version of events.

Suppositional reasoning: ‘What if . . . ?’

So far it looks very much like a case of one person’s word against another’s. But there is a way forward. It involves a very useful

technique known as suppositional reasoning. Suppositional reasoning typically starts with phrases such as ‘Supposing . . .’ or ‘What if . . . ?’

For example, suppose that the secretary is right: that Depp did go into the manager’s office while she was away, which was also during the period when the money went missing. What would follow from this? It would mean, of course, that Depp had an opportunity to take the money. It would also mean that he was lying when he said he was away from the offices throughout the

manager’s absence, unless he had mysteriously forgotten where he had been that morning. And it is hard to understand why he would lie unless he had something to hide. But would

Commentary

What we have here are two conflicting stories. The secretary, Rita, claims that the deputy manager went into the manager’s office twice, once while the manager was in there and once after she had left. The deputy manager, Mr Depp, confirms that he went into her office the first time, but denies the second. He claims that during the time he was alleged to have entered the manager’s office he was in the canteen talking to a driver. At some time during all this, some money went missing from the safe. The secretary’s statement, if true, casts considerable suspicion on Depp.

We will start by considering the witnesses themselves. The three occupants of the Management Suite are the manager, the deputy manager and the secretary. The driver is also a witness. Their ranking in the company is probably in that order. So does this mean we should rank the reliability of their evidence in the same way: the manager’s more than the deputy’s, the deputy’s more than the secretary’s, the driver’s least of all?

In a word, no. In some cases there may be more reason to trust a manager’s judgement over a junior employee’s, on the grounds of their respective qualifications and experience. But we are not talking about judgement here, only about honesty and accuracy. You may argue that a manager has more to lose than a secretary. But it would be quite unjustified to assume that therefore the secretary is more likely to be dishonest. It would be even more unjustified to assume that the secretary was less likely to be accurate in her statement. If you looked carefully at the evidence you will have seen that it is the secretary who is the most exact in the information she gives, the manager the most vague and imprecise. And it should not be overlooked that the manager left the safe unlocked, suggesting some absent- mindedness or carelessness on her part.

What about the statements themselves: are they equally plausible? On the face of it, yes. There is nothing improbable about Depp going

him to say they had been in the canteen all the time. So that the manager would think he was not in his office he left the door open and hid behind it as she passed. Is this all possible? Yes, it’s possible. But it is unlikely. For a start, how would Depp know when the manager was going to leave? This, added to the fact that the secretary would see him, makes such a possibility too remote to take very seriously.

On balance of probabilities, it seems that the secretary’s version of events is altogether less credible than Depp’s. And that is the most rational conclusion.