People Often Don ’t Understand The Psychology Of Confessions — And This Could Contribute To Wrongful Convictions

By Emily Reynolds Not all confessions are created equal. In a criminal justice setting, some admissions of guilt are both sincere and corroborated — but others are not, having been coerced, given by vulnerable or underage defendants, or unreliably reported secondhand. Yet mock jury trials have shown that lay people often tend to take a confession at face value, handing down a guilty verdict without considering other potential evidence. It’s with this in mind that Fabiana Alceste from City University of New York and colleagues question just how well people really understand the existing body of evidence on reliable, admissible confessions in a new paper in Applied Cognitive Psychology. The answer to that question could have ramifications not only for those on juries but also for the people they’re deciding whether to convict. To examine lay beliefs, the researchers presented 151 participants with thirty statements related to interviews, interrogations and confessions, some true and some false. These statements had previously been presented to a panel of confession experts, and related to one of four areas: general principles of psychology (e.g. “compared to most adults, adolescents exhibit immaturity of judgment in their decision-making”), truth and deception detection (e.g. “trained police can distinguish between truths and lies at high levels of accuracy”), police interrogation tactics (e.g. “threats of physical violence during interrogat...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Forensic Source Type: blogs