Does alcohol loosen the tongue? Intoxicated individuals' willingness to report transgressions or criminal behavior carried out by themselves or others

Abstract

Police commonly interview intoxicated suspects. This is concerning when suspects are innocent because intoxication often leads to a higher risk for impulsive decision making and reduces inhibition. However, the manner in which intoxication affects people's reporting of unethical or criminal actions carried out by themselves or others is unknown and was thus addressed in the current study. Participants (N = 116) were randomly assigned to one of six conditions based on a 2 (transgression: self, other) × 3 (alcohol condition: low-to-moderate intoxication, placebo, sober-control) between-participants design. After drinking their assigned beverages, participants were asked to disclose a transgression. No main effect of alcohol emerged. However, the odds that participants would report a transgression were significantly higher if they were asked to report a personal, rather than someone else's, transgression. Overall, low-to-moderate intoxication did not increase the likelihood of sensitive information disclosure in this initial study, but additional research is needed.

And one more for the road: Commentary on the Special Issue on alcohol and eyewitness memory

“…The intoxicated individuals were able to inhibit their responses when they needed to. Mindthoff et al (), similarly, found that intoxication did not predict transgression disclosure, also indicating that intoxicated individuals were able to inhibit disclosures, which does not support the disinhibition mechanism either.…”

“…They may have only encoded salient cues, causing them to be more susceptible to suggestions about other cues to fill in the gaps, which supports alcohol myopia as the underlying mechanism. Mindthoff et al () did not find support for alcohol myopia as intoxication was shown not to predict transgression disclosures; the intoxicated group was able to process the negative consequences of disclosing, which can be considered as peripheral information, as efficiently as the control group. Meanwhile, Sauerland et al () argued that, based on the AMT's automatic allocation of the limited resources towards salient cues, intoxication would not affect an individual's ability to discriminate salient cues.…”

“…Suspects may intend to withhold information when being interviewed by law enforcement, but alcohol intoxication may have a disinhibiting effect and cause them to disclose transgressions. In Mindthoff et al (), participants who were moderately intoxicated (0.06–0.08%), who only thought they were intoxicated (0.00–0.02%), or who were sober (0.00%) saw a bartender pour himself a shot, something that he was not allowed to do. Subsequently, the participants were asked either whether they saw the bartender commit a transgression or whether they themselves had committed a transgression.…”

“…Some studies ensured that the design was completely balanced by either including a reverse placebo condition (Flowe et al, ; Gawrylowicz, Scoboria, Teodorini, & Albery, ) or counterbalancing intoxicated, placebo, and sober conditions at both encoding and retrieval (Evans et al, ). Other studies opted to have more naturalistic settings by testing participants in bars (Altman, McQuiston, & Schreiber Compo, ; Sauerland, Broers, & Van Oorsouw, ) or simulated bars (Mindthoff, Hagsand, Schreiber Compo, & Evans, ). Furthermore, the studies had a wide range of dependent variables.…”

“…Furthermore, the studies had a wide range of dependent variables. Besides free‐recall,cued‐recall, and recognition tasks about staged events, studies measured recall and recognition of words and word pairs (Maylor, Long, & Newstead, ), recognition of unfamiliar faces (Monds, Kloft, Sauer, Honan, & Palmer, ), disclosure of transgressions (Mindthoff et al, ), and interpretation of actions and reactions (Hildebrand Karlén, Lindqvist Bagge, Fahlke, & Armelius, ). Finally, not only does this Special Issue include experimental studies but it also includes a meta‐analysis (Jores, Colloff, Kloft, Smailes, & Flowe, ).…”