A survey of people's attitudes and beliefs about false confessions

Abstract

The attitudes and beliefs of jury eligible individuals regarding false confessions were investigated in order to uncover potential biases. Survey respondents provided perceptions of factors related to false confessions (e.g. their frequency and likely situational and dispositional risk variables). Results indicate that people possess an awareness that false confessions can occur and believe that a confession should not be taken as an absolute indicator of guilt. However, their understanding of predisposing and situational factors that contribute to false confessions was incomplete, as was their understanding of interrogation practices. Furthermore, respondents showed a marked bias against believing that they personally would ever falsely confess, which is discussed in the context of potential inconsistencies between people's self-report and their actual behaviors in naturalistic situations.

Minimization and maximization techniques: assessing the perceived consequences of confessing and confession diagnosticity

“…However, participants failed to recognize the impact of manipulative techniques when estimating their own confession decisions. This finding is consistent with prior research indicating that participants believe that false confessions occur and that people have certain vulnerabilities to false confessions, but that they themselves are relatively immune to such situations (Henkel, Coffman, & Dailey, 2008). It appears that participants may be falling victim to the fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977) by failing to take into account situational factors, like manipulation of the perceived consequences of confessing, when evaluating their own behavior in the interrogation room.…”

“…In Experiment 1, we examined the social perception of minimization and maximization techniques that do and do not manipulate the perception of consequences for the elicitation of confessions from others versus oneself. Previous survey research indicates that while participants believe that false confessions occur and that certain populations are vulnerable to providing them, they believe that they personally would never falsely confess (Henkel, Coffman, & Dailey, 2008). We wanted to further examine this finding using a design that asked participants to imagine themselves in an interrogation situation.…”

Jurors believe interrogation tactics are not likely to elicit false confessions: will expert witness testimony inform them otherwise?

“…To date, there has been only three published studies (Chojnacki et al, 2008;Leo & Liu, 2008;Henkel, Coffman, & Dailey, 2008) of potential jurors' perceptions of interrogations and confessions, and only one experimental study of the effect of expert witness testimony on mock-juron perceptions of a confession (Moffa & Platania, 2007). …”

Improving the Comprehensibility of a Canadian Police Caution on the Right to Silence

“…Sometimes suspects confess to crimes they did not commit in order to escape the physical or psychological distress of the interrogation. It is difficult to comprehend why an innocent person would ever confess to a crime (Henkel et al 2008), but there is strong evidence to suggest that the psychological pressure of the interrogation situation may be sufficiently powerful to induce false confessions that can lead to wrongful convictions (King and Snook 2009;Moore and Fitzsimmons in press). Indeed, in the last few decades there have been numerous cases in which innocent suspects 'confessed', were convicted, and were later exonerated on the basis of DNA evidence (Drizin and Leo 2004;Kassin 1997;Kassin et al 2008;Kassin and Gudjonsson 2004).…”