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False Confessions Study

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Recommended: Social psychology on false confession

The Social Psychology of False Confessions: Compliance, Internalization, and Confabulation is a study conducted by Saul M. Kassin and Katherine L. Kichel of Williams College. This experiment explores social influence and the impact it has on confessions. As a fundamental right in the United States, people are given several rights and if broken, various punishments can be implemented. Criminal confessions are usually self-incriminating or coerced, yet these can easily be swayed by other factors. Social influence can directly affect suspects and can potentially cause people to confess to crimes they did not commit. At times, people tend to have a false sense of security in situations where interrogators show false evidence to convince the suspect …show more content…

Compliance was shown when the confederate wrote out what happened as a confession and asked the subject to sign. Internalization was tested when the subjects were recorded, the video was then analyzed to see if the subject felt any form of guilt for the computer crashing. Lastly, subjects were asked to reenact what had happened when they accidently hit the “ALT” key to show confabulation. Subjects in the fast pace/witness group all signed the confession, 65% thought they were guilty, and 35% confabulated details. After the experiment was over, the subjects were debriefed to explain the gist of the study. The slow pace group with no-witness control group were less likely to exhibit effects as opposed to the fast pace and witness group most likely show effects. The subjects were amazed how easily manipulated their perceptions of their own behavior could be. The results of the dependent variable show how the subject’s behavior was influenced by the independent variable. The results show that 69% of the 75 subjects (3 subjects did not count) signed the confession sheet when asked by the confederate. 28% exhibited signs of internalization. 9% confabulated details about what happened to support the false belief of them hitting the “ALT” key. With all the results taken into consideration, just having a witness in the room increased the rates of compliant and internalized

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Once the morals and beliefs have been personally established, it often results in an internal battle after an instance of blindly following an influence. Because of the newly established personal thinking, it is more than likely that after following the negative actions of another, the individual will reflect upon it with regret. This is maximized when the actions taken are deeply flawed or affect another person negatively, and it is to be expected that an internal conflict is a great influence on the individual and results in deep internal reflection upon the action and its motives. An example of this is Richard Thomas’s actions after the attack on Sasha demonstrates this. “After he jumped off the bus, Richard strode away with his hands in his pockets, trying to look casual.

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The police then determine if the suspect is guilty and continuously interrogate, accuse, and even threaten the suspect for hours until they confess, whether they are guilty or not. On many occasions the people who are coerced into false confessions are have severe mental impairments that prevent them from functioning as a normal person with out the impairments would.

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Although, this tactic does not always work, it can cause some problems. Officers are supposed to use the tactic when there is a suspected criminal, but if it turns out there is no criminal it can cause many problems. Officers do not need to persuade the innocent because then the cops are just creating crime witch is the opposite of what they are supposed to do. The main point of this article is that it wants to make the structure and the frame work of the entrapment system clearer and more precise. The article identifies ways to make entrapment more stable and clearer.

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Watching the “Rape at McDonalds” video was very disturbing. It was shocking to see how all the participants, except for the maintenance man, complied with the bizarre demands of the supposed police, especially Donna Jean Summers. As a manager, she should have known the policies of the company, as a reasonable person, she should had handled the situation in a different way. However, there are some psychological explanations for her behaviors. The law says that we must obey the authority; she believed that she was doing the right thing by following the others given by “the cop” even if the commands were very odd.

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When we are in a group, whatever the group thinks we will one third of the times go along with. “Why did most subjects conform so readily? When they were interviewed after the experiment, most of them said that they did not really believe their conforming answers, but had gone along with the group for fear of being ridiculed or thought "peculiar." A few of them said that they really did believe the group 's answers were correct (Solomon Asch Conformity Experiment). ”

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Risk factors regarding interrogation techniques more commonly associated with false confessions include being young, suffering from a mental illness, cognitive impairment, and suggestibility. These are not factors police take into account or test for before they start an interrogation. The Reid technique has the interrogator telling the suspect they did commit the crime, gives them reasons why they would have done it, gives reasons that explain away the suspects denial, seeming to be sincere and understanding of the suspect, taking advantage of the suspects growing weary, and by having them choose a good reason to commit the crime. These procedures would increase the chances of obtaining a false confession from someone with a risk factor

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In today's judicial society, judge, jury, and the courts consider a confession to be a very important piece of evidence. The law enforcement agencies comprised of detectives, police investigators, and prosecutors, rely heavily on this evidence when attempting to solve crimes. Obtaining this evidence is critical even though the practices of police during this process sustain numerous amounts of criticism particularly on the legalities of how the confession was obtained during the interrogation process. The efforts of many human rights advocates as well as legal guidelines are to insure that police interrogations are ethical and in compliance with the legal requirements. The legal boundaries are focused on critical physical and psychological

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The results more than concerned Asch, who conducted a second, revised experiment to further analyze this. Allowing the subject to write down their answer after hearing the answers from the confederates lowered the conformity rate by one third (“Solomon Asch experiment”), which was a bit comforting, but not by much. Regardless, concern was still present. “Why?” Asch wondered.

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Stephanie Ericsson begins her explorative essay, “The Ways We Lie,” with a personal anecdote of all the lies she fabricated in one day. She told her bank that a deposit was in the mail when it was not, told a client that the traffic had been bad when she was late for other reasons, told her partner that her day was fine when it was really exhausting, and told her friend she was too busy for lunch when she just was not hungry, all in the course of a day. She shifts from talking about herself to talking about everyone, claiming that all people lie, exaggerate, minimize, keep secrets, and tell other lies. But, like herself, most still consider themselves honest people. She describes a week in which she tried to never tell a lie; it was debilitating, she claims.

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“Courts have permitted the interrogators to tell the suspect that if he confesses his conscience will be comforted or they will inform the suspect’s cooperation to the court” (Richard 2008). It is unethical to promise and give hope to the suspect that will not be met in order to obtain a voluntary confession which are induced. During interrogation someone may walk in and hide his identity like being a police officer, while acting like someone else and promise the suspect that he or she is here to help and they are in good hands. Doing this is violating the rights of the suspect and should be taken into consideration, because it inflicts the mind of a suspect. If the suspect is going to confess it should be voluntary not being forced to “voluntary

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