The presumption of guilt in suspect interrogations: Apprehension as a trigger of confirmation bias and debiasing techniques.

Abstract

This research tests whether a police officer's decision to apprehend a suspect triggers confirmation bias during an interrogation. The study also tests two strategies to reduce confirmation bias: (1) decoupling decision to apprehend from interrogation and (2) reducing cognitive load for the interrogating police officer. In Experiment 1, Swedish police officers ( = 60) were faced with 12 scenarios in which they either had to decide for themselves whether to apprehend a suspect or were informed about the corresponding decision by another police officer or a prosecutor. Participants then prepared questions for a suspect interrogation and evaluated the trustworthiness of the suspect's denial or confession. The same method was used in Experiment 2 but with law and psychology students ( = 60) as participants. In Experiment 3, psychology students ( = 60) prepared interrogation questions either by freely producing their own or by choosing questions from a preset list. Overall, apprehended suspects were interrogated in a more guilt presumptive way and rated as less trustworthy than non apprehended suspects. However, the tested debiasing techniques, primarily reducing cognitive load for the interrogating police officer, hold some potential in mitigating this bias. (PsycINFO Database Record

Eyewitness identification in its social context.

“…Thus, even if lineup administrators are blind to which lineup member is the suspect, the interaction between the administrator and the witness may still prove problematic. For example, it would not be surprising if lineup administrators are certain of suspects’ guilt, irrespective of their actual guilt, because research on interrogations and false confessions makes clear that interrogators are guilt presumptive (Lidén et al, 2018; Meissner & Kassin, 2002). What if these guilt presumptive administrators are constrained from repeating an identification with a witness?…”

A meta-analysis of the emotional victim effect for female adult rape complainants: Does complainant distress influence credibility?

“…Some criminal justice professionals and scholars assume that experience and training which judges, lawyers, and police officers receive or training which police trainees or law students receive equips them to make more accurate decisions in cases than jurors or community members (e.g., Kahan, 2015 cf. Lidén, Gräns, & Juslin, 2018). Judges often write about how they believe jurors are easily influenced by bias and their emotions (e.g., Edwards, 1984; Hans & Vidmar, 1986) and prosecutors often raise jurors’ beliefs in victim stereotypes as an impediment to prosecution in rape cases but not necessarily an issue in their own decision-making (Bluett-Boyd & Fileborn, 2014; Temkin, 2000; Temkin & Krahé, 2008).…”

From devil’s advocate to crime fighter: confirmation bias and debiasing techniques in prosecutorial decision-making

“…This implies that humans reason in a one-sided way in order to convince others that they are right (Mercier, 2016;Mercier & Sperber, 2011) and want to defend their ideas and behaviors in order to maintain control and self-esteem (Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1987). In line with this, research has found that confirmation bias seems to be stronger in relation to self-generated hypotheses than others' hypotheses, in both the legal context (Lidén et al, 2018) and other contexts (Dunbar & Klahr, 1989;Haverkamp, 1993;Klahr, Dunbar, & Fay, 1990;Schunn & Klahr, 1992, 1993. In this research, the notion of confirmation bias as a self-enhancement bias is tested by changing decision maker between the arrest and prosecution to see whether this is functional as a debiasing technique.…”

“…A common situation in the Swedish setting is that the police has decided to apprehend a suspect (Lidén, Gräns, & Juslin, 2018) and the prosecutor then has to decide whether the deprivation of liberty shall be maintained, that is, whether the suspect shall be arrested. In this assessment, they have to evaluate the evidence available to decide whether the evidentiary requirements for an arrest are fulfilled.…”