Written by Dr Wendy Paton, Lecturer in Psychology (Forensic), Centre for Applied Psychological Science, Crime and Conflict Theme
False confessions are not a rare occurrence, though it remains challenging to understand why innocent people sometimes confess to crimes they did not commit. This is complicated further by common misconceptions, for example, that false confessions only occur following exposure to extreme pressure during a police interview. There are also differing views in terms of whether making a false confession can ever be considered a ‘rational’ choice.
For innocent people who have falsely confessed, this choice, however irrational it may seem to others, has served a purpose. For example, in some cases of proven false confessions, confessing has brought a coercive and intimidating interrogation to a close. In other cases, people have falsely confessed to protect others. In these examples, the relief (albeit short-lived when weighed up against the long-term consequences of confessing) of escaping an aversive situation and/or protecting someone can be difficult to comprehend.
I am particularly interested in examining the underlying reasons for making false confessions. The first two studies I conducted involved experimentally-induced false confessions. Rather than simply analysing data about the number of false confessions obtained in different conditions, I also asked participants to explain why they decided to confess following a false accusation. In my first study participants were asked to complete a typing task and specifically advised not to hit the ‘windows’ key as it would cause a computer malfunction and the loss of all my research data. One minute into the typing task, and following a simulated computer crash, I presented participants with a confession stating “I hit the windows key and caused the computer crash. Data were lost”. Much to my initial surprise, 70% of the 188 participants signed a false confession. Various explanations were offered, for example, “I think I might have hit the windows key by mistake”; “It was my fault. I’m not good with computers” and “Something always goes wrong when I use computers”. However, the most common reason for making a false confession appeared to be to avert the blame from me. Was this a rational choice? Bear in mind that false confessions were signed despite participants being unaware of whether they would face any serious consequences for the apparent loss of all my data.
Despite my findings being consistent with previous studies in which the computer- crash paradigm was used, I was aware that the paradigm suffers from ambiguity (and computers sometimes crash for no apparent reason). Furthermore, I acknowledged that the false allegation may not have been personally meaningful to participants. Therefore, for my next study I wanted to develop a paradigm that was free from ambiguity and which had improved ecological validity. I also wanted to examine whether false confessions could be obtained when the false accusation was more serious in nature.
Combining my interests in false confessions and investigative interviewing, I developed a ‘theft’ paradigm for my second study (Paton et al., 2018). This involved falsely accusing participants of the theft of a gift voucher (which they thought they may receive following completion of the study). After I made the false accusation, participants were interviewed in one of eight conditions. I wanted to make the interviews as realistic as possible despite being conducted under lab-conditions. Therefore, I developed interview scripts and procedures based on knowledge I gained from attending and observing police interviews with suspects. I recruited four fantastic confederates who I trained to interview participants in both a friendly and stern manner using various interview techniques (e.g. open questioning, repetitive questioning). At the end of each interview, participants were presented with their ‘statement’ that included a false confession. Of the 120 participants, 30.8% signed the confession.
Again, I was interested in exploring reasons for signing the false confession. Reasons for falsely confessing differed between conditions. For example,
participants interviewed by a friendly interviewer in the non-coercive, open questioning condition, said they confessed as they had no reason to distrust the interviewer. In comparison, participants interviewed by a ‘stern’ interviewer said they confessed because they felt intimidated by the interviewer. However, the main reason for making a false confession was to terminate the interview. Despite being conducted under lab conditions, participants’ comments indicated that they perceived the event as stressful: “I felt a bit shaky,” “I felt anxious and upset,” “My throat went really dry”. Therefore, as signing the false confession signalled the end of the interview, the choice to confess was considered rational by many participants. Needless to say, detailed debriefing was conducted.
While it is important to understand the underlying reasons for making false confessions, lab-research will always have restricted ecological validity no matter how realistic the study environment. However, my research demonstrates not only that innocent participants falsely confess for various different reasons but also the ease with which false confessions can sometimes be elicited.
References
Paton, W., Bain, S. A., Gozna, L., Gilchrist, E., Heim, D., Gardner, E., … & Fischer, R. (2018). The combined effects of questioning technique and interviewer manner on false confessions. Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, 15(3), 335-349. https://doi.org/10.1002/jip.1513
Why do innocent people sometimes make false confessions?
