Own Summary – Interrogation &
Interviewing
Problem 1 – False confessions
What are different types of confessions?
1. Voluntary false confession
- Involves spontaneous self-incriminating statements made without external
pressure
- Reasons: pathological desire for notoriety, (un)conscious need for self-
punishment due to guilt, an inability to distinguish fact from fantasy (mental illness),
desire to protect the actual perpetrator
2. Compliant false confession
- Suspects have the private belief that they are innocent, but confess in order to
secure a benefit of avoid a threatened harm or aversive state
- Reasons: being allowed to sleep, eat, get drugs (addicts), ect., avoid a stressful
situation, avoid punishment or gain a promised reward
3. Internalized false confession
- Suspects come to believe that they are actually guilty of a non-committed crime
- Reasons: told that there is incontrovertible evidence of their involvement, occurs
when people develop such a profound distrust of their own memory that they
become vulnerable to influence from external sources (police)
What are risk factors of false confessions?
Sleep deprivation
· Consequences of sleep deprivation:
- Disrupting mood
- Impairing a whole host of cognitive operations
- Reduces inhibitory control, leading to people making riskier decisions
- Interferes with the ability to anticipate and measure the consequences of
actions
- False and distorted memories of past events vulnerable to suggestive
influences
· 17% of interrogations occur during typical sleep hours (00:00-08:00)
· A lot of interrogations last more than 12h
· Experiment: do NOT press the esc key. They don’t. (Frenda et al.)
- People were deprived of sleep 50% falsely confessed
- Do not deprive them of sleep only 18% confessed
- The higher the measured cognitive style, the more likely to sign when sleep
deprived
· The odds of confessing are 4.5 times higher for participants with high levels of
sleepiness
,Situational risk factors
1. Physical custody and isolation
- Interrogations that exceed 6 hours = coercive
- People under stress seek desperately to affiliate with others so isolation from
significant others leads to the suspect to give in, in order to get out
- Sleep deprivation
2. Presentation of false evidence
- Once the suspect is isolated and presumed guilty, interrogators communicate that
resistance is useless
- Police exploit the psychology of inevitability to drive suspects into a state of despair
- Basic research shows that once people see an outcome as inevitable, cognitive and
motivational forces conspire to promote their acceptance, compliance with and even
approval of the outcome
- Interrupting the suspect’s denials, overcoming objections and refuting alibis
- In the US, lying about evidence is LEGAL
- Presentation of false evidence can alter the subjects’ visual judgments, beliefs and
perceptions of others, behavior, memories, medical outcomes, emotional state, ect.
- Polygraph-induced false confessions
3. Minimization
- Interrogators are trained to minimize the crime through ‘theme development’ = a
process of providing moral justification or face-saving excuses, making confession
seem like an recommendable means of escape
- Imply leniency – trapped to confess. Why?
- Reinforcement: influenced by outcomes that are immediate than delayed
- Pragmatic implication: process info ‘between the lines’ and recall not what
was stated per se, but what was pragmatically implied leading listeners to
infer something that is ‘neither explicitly stated nor necessarily implied’
- High-end inducements = appeals that communicate to a suspect that he or she will
receive less punishment, a lower prison sentence or some form of leniency upon
confession/or a higher charge or longer sentence in the absence of confession
Dispositional risk factors
1. Adolescence and immaturity
o Adolescence
o Early o Onset of puberty, heightening emotional arousability, sensation
seeking, and reward orientation
o Middle o Increased vulnerability to risk-taking and problems in affect and
behaviour
o Late o Frontal lobes continue to mature, facilitating regulatory
competence and executive functioning
- Over-represented
- Young age + psychologically oriented interrogation tactics = false confession
- Immaturity = impulsive decision making, can’t consider long-term consequences,
risky behavior, increased susceptibility to outside influences
- Grey matter thinning, white matter increasing emotion regulation, planning and
self-control
, - Police exploit a juvenile’s restless energy, boredom, low resistance to temptation,
and lack of supervision
- Playing one suspect against the other is effective on 1st time offenders
- Adolescents have impairments in adjudicative competence (ability to help in one’s
own defense) and comprehension of legal terms
2. Cognitive and intellectual disabilities
- Over-represented
- The US Supreme Court decided to exclude this group categorically from capital
punishment
- Intellectual disability = IQ<70
- Impairments: adapting to societal norms, communication, social and interpersonal
skills, and self-direction
- Heightened susceptibility to influence rely on authority figures for solutions,
please authorities, seeks out friends, fake competence, short attention span,
memory gaps, lack impulse control, accept blame
- Inability to understand Miranda warnings = you have the right to remain silent, ect.
many people actually cannot fully understand and rephrase these warnings
- Suggestibility people with mental retardation are more likely to yield to leading
questions and change their answers in response to mild negative feedback
3. Personality and Psychopathology
- Antisocial personality traits more likely to be involved in offending, more prone
to lie for short-term gain, less concerned about the consequences
- Psychopathology often accompanied by faulty reality monitoring, distorted
perception, anxiety, poor self-control, guilt
- Over-represented
- Depressed mood
- Co-occurring substance abuse or dependence disorders = additional risk factor
- Multiple exposures to unpleasant or traumatic life events
- ADHD high levels of compliance, idk makes police suspicious
Innocence
· Innocent people tend to believe that truth and justice will prevail and that their
innocence will become transparent
· Innocent people cooperate fully with the police not realizing they are a suspect
and should keep quiet
· Illusion of transparency = a tendency for people to overestimate the extent to which
their true thoughts, emotions and other inner states can be seen by others
Reid Technique
· A method of interrogation
· Isolation, confrontation, minimization
· Three phases:
1. Factual analysis
2. Behavior analysis interview
- Nonaccusatory, allows the interviewer to gather investigative and
behavioral information
, 3. Nine-step interrogation
1) Directly confronting the suspect with a statement indicating the
interrogator’s belief in their guilt, which is then followed by a behavioral
pause
2) Developing a theme or explanation of why the crime is excused –
difference between emotional and nonemotional offenders
3) Handling denials – prevent or discourage the suspect from denying
involvement in the crime, by reconfirming one’s belief in their guilt and
reinstating the proposed excuse
4) Overcome objections – a movement from denials to objections s argued to
be a good indication of deception when a suspect says he didn’t do
something ‘because’, the police give a reason why the suspect WOULD do it
5) Procurement and retention of the suspect’s attention – keep the attention
of the suspect by increasing physical proximity or using visual aids
6) Overcome passive mood – when the suspect starts to cry or get depressed,
the interrogator should display understanding and sympathy, and urge to tell
the truth
7) Presentation of alternative questions – presents an individual with a choice
between two explanations for commission of the crime one is face-saving
and the other is evil, but both imply guilt
8) Having the suspect orally verbalize various details of the offense After a
suspect makes an admission of guilt, the interrogator is encouraged to show
signs of sharing the suspect’s relief and to draw the individual into a
conversation to fully develop the confession. When general acknowledgment
of guilt is achieved, the interrogator is encouraged to return to the beginning
of the crime and obtain information that can be corroborated
9) Converting the oral confession into a written confession
How do you test false confessions?
· Two experiments alt key and cheating paradigm
· ALT-key:
Computer paradigm
- Demonstrates that false incriminating evidence can lead people to accept guilt for a crime they did not
commit
- 79 undergraduates
Method
2 subjects (pp + confederate) per session participated in a RT tasks on a computer. The confederate was to
read aloud a list of letters, and the subject was to type these letters on the keyboard. After 3 min, the
subject and confederate were to reverse roles. Before the session began, subjects were warned not to press
the "ALT" key because doing so would cause data to be lost. After 60s, the computer crashes and a highly
distressed experimenter accused the subject of having pressed the forbidden key. All initially denied the
charge.
- Manipulation: IV
o Vulnerability: fast or slow pace
o False incriminating evidence: false witness condition (says she saw they did it) + no witness
condition
- Dependent measures: DV
