Why do people make false confessions? As long as they did not commit the crimes, how difficult is it to say “No, I did not commit the crime!”? Schneider and his colleagues explained that the self-fulfilling prophecies can influence people’s behaviors and eventually elicit a confession that is false from a suspect (Schneider et al., 2012). Kassin and Kiechel further elaborated that false confessions can be elicited by false evidence that are presented to the suspect (Schneider et al., 2012). My superficial response to the notions would be, “If you did not do it regardless of the evidence, how hard is it to say no to the coercion?”
Unfortunately, eliciting false confessions is not as simple as how Schneider and colleagues noted in the book. According to a recent study done by Larmour and his colleagues, people often cave in and take the blame for something that they did not commit due to the use of the Reid interrogative techniques which is prevalently used in North America (Larmour et al., 2014). The Reid techniques emphasize increasing the psychological pressure and using manipulation techniques that make people acquiesce in desired outcomes set by interrogators which is confession regardless of authenticity. Interestingly, individuals are aware that their behaviors are being influenced by the interrogative techniques, but they end up conforming to the demands of the interrogators for two reasons: 1) they are eager to please others and 2) they want to avoid conflict and confrontation (Gudjonsson, 1989). Now, my next question is what types of people are susceptible to interrogative compliance?
According to Larmour and colleagues, there are several factors that are related to interrogative compliance. The study revealed that females are more likely to conform to demands of interrogators, individuals with high rates of antisocial personality traits, and those with impulsivity and poor behavior control are more likely to make false confessions. In another recent study by Frenda and his colleagues, sleep deprivation increases likelihood that people will make false confessions (Frenda et al., 2016). It appears to be many different factors that elicit false confessions including the self-fulfilling prophecies. This notion makes me wonder how many innocent people have been wrongfully convicted and being punished for the acts they did not commit, and how effective the police interrogation techniques currently in use are.
References
Gudjonsson, G. H. (1989). Compliance in an interrogative situation: A new scale. Personality and Individual Differences, 10(5), 535-540. doi:10.1016/0191-8869(89)90035-4
Frenda, S. J., Berkowitz, S. R., Loftus, E. F., & Fenn, K. M. (2016). Sleep deprivation and false confessions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(8), 2047-2050. doi:10.1073/pnas.1521518113
Larmour, S. R., Bergstrøm, H., Gillen, C. T., & Forth, A. E. (2014). Behind the Confession: Relating False Confession, Interrogative Compliance, Personality Traits, and Psychopathy. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 30(2), 94-102. doi:10.1007/s11896-014-9144-3
Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (2012). Applied social psychology: understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
This was a thoughtful post, and discussed a misunderstood concept. When a false confession occurs, this can obviously be due to a number of factors. I like that you discussed both a dispositional factor and a situational factor that might cause false confessions. Certain people who are more impulsive and make false confessions can be said to have a dispositional factor causing this phenomena. However, if the pressure of the interrogators is the reason behind the confession, this confession can be identified as having a situational cause.
It seems that there are too many different factors that can cause false confessions. Of course, other situational factors could be responsible for the confession. As you noted, sleep deprivation can fundamentally alter our thinking patterns. Though this might seem like a small possibility, this and other possible situational causes can certainly account for some of the observed false confessions.
One final thing I wanted to address is the self-fulfilling prophecy. When people are projecting a certain attitude to those in their environment, that attitude can carry some weight in affecting the receiving party’s behavior. A common example that psychologists refer to is teachers and their expectations for students. If a teacher behaves in a way that makes his/her student feel inferior, their results on graded classwork can sometimes reflect this. Relating this to our discussion, we can see how interrogators can come up with a false confession, simply by treating the suspect in a manner that they would an actual criminal. More studies should be done analyzing the different causes of this phenomena, but better external conditions should be one of the notable improvements of said studies.
I find your post to be really interesting! I know that police do use controversial techniques to obtain a confession but I did not know the actual name of it. Are these forms of interrogations actually considered legal? How often do false confessions actually happen?
Another really interesting point in your post is the reasons why people might give false confessions. I always thought that one of the factors may have been coercion from outside forces, such as danger for one’s life or family if the false confession is not given.
Thank you for your post!
-Aruba
I find your post to be really interesting! I know that police do use controversial techni