The Psychology of Confessions: A Review of the Literature and Issues

Open science practices in the false memory literature

In response to the replication crisis in psychology, the scientific community has advocated open science practices to promote transparency and reproducibility. Although existing reviews indicate inconsistent and generally low adoption of open science in psychology, a current-day, detailed analysis is lacking. Recognising the significant impact of false memory research in legal contexts, we conducted a preregistered systematic review to assess the integration of open science practices within this field, analysing 388 publications from 2015 to 2023 (including 15 replications and 3 meta-analyses). Our findings indicated a significant yet varied adoption of open science practices. Most studies (86.86%) adhered to at least one measure, with publication accessibility being the most consistently adopted practice at 73.97%. While data sharing demonstrated the most substantial growth, reaching about 75% by 2023, preregistration and analysis script sharing lagged, with 20-25% adoption in 2023. This review highlights a promising trend towards enhanced research quality, transparency, and reproducibility in false memory research. However, the inconsistent implementation of open science practices may still challenge the verification, replication, and interpretation of research findings. Our study underscores the need for a comprehensive adoption of open science to improve research reliability and validity substantially, fostering trust and credibility in psychology.

Investigative fatigue: how sleep-circadian factors shape criminal investigations

Investigating criminal complaints and identifying culprits to be prosecuted in the court of law is an essential process for law-enforcement and public safety. However, law-enforcement investigators operate under very challenging conditions due to stressful environments, understaffing, and public scrutiny, which factors into investigative errors (e.g. uncleared cases). This paper argues that one contributing factor to investigative failures involves sleep and circadian disruption of investigators themselves, known to be prevalent among law-enforcement. By focusing on investigative interviewing, this analysis illustrates how sleep and circadian disruption could impact investigations by considering three broad phases of (1) preparation, (2) information elicitation, and (3) assessment and corroboration. These phases are organized in a framework that outlines theory-informed pathways in need of empirical attention, with special focus on effort and decision-making processes critical to investigations. While existing evidence is limited, preliminary findings support some elements of investigative fatigue. The paper concludes by placing investigative fatigue in a broader context of investigative work while providing recommendations for future research throughout. This paper is part of the Sleep and Circadian Health in the Justice System Collection.

Why admitted cases of AHT make a low quality reference standard: A survey of people accused of AHT in France

Several influential articles that attempt to establish diagnostic methods for Abusive Head Trauma (AHT) use admitted cases as a reference standard. This study analyses a survey of people accused of AHT in France, to understand the environment and situations in which such admissions are made. Multiple reasons to question the reliability of admissions to AHT are demonstrated in the responses, including reduced sentences, the return of children to the family home, a desire to stop accusations being leveled at a partner and for legal proceedings to end. These factors must be considered in the context of proceedings that are long, expensive and stressful, leading to depression and financial hardship, and that seem to be inevitably heading towards conviction. The ineluctable conclusion is that admitted cases do not make a suitably reliable reference standard for undertaking scientific investigation, or for validating the diagnostic methods used for AHT.

Novel Approaches and Cognitive Neuroscience Perspectives on False Memory and Deception

The DRM (Deese-Roediger-McDermott) paradigm produces robust false memories of non-presented critical words. After studying a thematic word list (e.g., bed, rest, and pillow) participants falsely remember the critical item "sleep." We report two false memory experiments. Study One introduces a novel use of the lexical decision task (LDT) to prime critical words. Participants see two letter-strings and make timed responses indicating whether they are both words. The word pairs Night-Bed and Dream-Thweeb both prime "sleep" but only one pair contains two words. Our primary purpose is to introduce this new methodology via two pilot experiments. The results, considered preliminary, are promising as they indicate that participants were as likely to recognize critical words (false memories) and presented words (true memories) just as when studying thematic lists. Study Two actually employs the standard DRM lists so that semantic priming is in play there as well. The second study, however, uses functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to measure activity in the prefrontal cortex during a DRM task which includes a deception phase where participants intentionally lie about critical lures. False and true memories occurred at high levels and activated many of the same brain regions but, compared to true memories, cortical activity was higher for false memories and lies. Accuracy findings are accompanied by confidence and reaction time results. Both investigations suggest that it is difficult to distinguish accurate from inaccurate memories. We explain results in terms of activation-monitoring theory and Fuzzy Trace Theory. We provide real world implications and suggest extending the present research to varying age groups and special populations. A nagging question has not been satisfactorily answered: Could neural pathways exist that signal the presence of false memories and lies? Answering this question will require imaging experiments that focus on regions of distinction such as the anterior prefrontal cortex.

Confession to Make: Inadvertent Confessions and Admissions in United Kingdom and United States Police Contexts

Previous studies have addressed many different kinds of confessions in police investigations – real, false, coerced, fabricated – and highlighted both psychological and social mechanisms that underlie them. Here, we focus on inadvertent confessions and admissions, which occur when a suspect appears to be confessing without being fully aware of doing so, or when police officers believe they have a confession or admission of guilt when in fact this is not the case. The goal of the study is to explain when, how and why these confessions and admissions occur as well as how they are dealt with in two different jurisdictions, the United States and the United Kingdom. We use a discourse analysis approach because inadvertent confessions and admissions of guilt are the product of miscommunication – they happen because the speaker’s meaning and the hearer’s meaning are misaligned. The data consist of 50 interviews from the United Kingdom and 50 interrogations from the United States with both English-speaking and non-English speaking suspects. Our results demonstrate that inadvertent confessions can occur in both locales due to reliance on inference, which is inevitable since inference is the backbone of any human communication, as well as due to additional factors such as linguistic, cultural and procedural issues. We found that these phenomena are more frequent and less well controlled for in the United States context due to (a) no systematic checking of understanding, (b) adversarial questioning techniques and an absence of legal representation, and (c) lack of professional, high-quality interpreting. We discuss the implications of our findings for current efforts to improve access to justice, custodial procedures and language services, and we make recommendations for the implementation of our research in professional practice.

Influence of the Fundamental Attribution Error on Perceptions of Blame and Negligence

Automobile accidents are a frequent occurrence in the United States and commonly result in legal ramifications. Through a fundamental attribution error (FAE) framework (Ross, 1977), the current research examined how individuals perceive blame and negligence in these cases. In Study 1 (N = 360), we manipulated the driver (you vs. stranger) of a hypothetical accident scenario and the situational circumstances surrounding the accident (favorable vs. unfavorable). Supporting the FAE, individuals' situational blame attributions only varied as a function of situational circumstances when they themselves were hypothetically driving. However, neither the driver nor the situation significantly predicted dispositional blame attributions. Yet, Study 1 provided initial support for the importance of an individual's trait tendency to neglect situational constraints when making dispositional blame attributions. In Study 2 (N = 212), we again manipulated situational circumstances surrounding the hypothetical accident, but within the context of a mock civil trial. Results provided additional support for the importance of this trait tendency and expanded our findings of dispositional blame attributions to perceptions of negligence. Implications include the importance of considering trait individual differences in the likelihood to ignore situational demands when individuals are making legally relevant judgments about automobile accidents.

When the Evidence Is Incorrect: an Exploration of What Happens When Interviewers Unwittingly Present Inaccurate Information in Interviews with Suspects

Skillfully presenting evidence/information to suspects is one of the few interviewing techniques that increases the likelihood of guilty suspects providing information or making a confession, without making innocent ones do so as well. It is important that this evidence/information is correct, since deliberately disclosing incorrect evidence poses some risks. Also, in real-life interviews, police interviewers may unwittingly disclose incorrect evidence, for example when a witness was mistaken and provided the police with incorrect information. The present study examined the behavior of fifty police interviewers in interviews with "suspects" of a scripted crime: what is their response when the interviewees try to explain to them that some of the evidence/information just disclosed by them is incorrect? Eleven interviewers responded adaptively (by actively picking up on this new information), 35 responded in a neutral way and four responded maladaptively (by discrediting the interviewee's claim). Experience and a full interview training had a significant negative relationship with adaptiveness. These results indicate that, when preparing and conducting interviews with suspects, greater awareness is needed of the possibility that some of the evidence/information that is to be disclosed could be incorrect, and therefore it is crucial that suspects' responses which suggest such may be the case are taken into account.

Police Interviewing Behaviors and Commercially Sexually Exploited Adolescents' Reluctance

Little is known about the relation between law enforcement interviewing behaviors and commercially sexually exploited children's (CSEC) reluctance. This study examined the relation between officers' use of maximization, (references to) expertise, minimization, and support and adolescent CSEC victims' reluctance in a small sample of police interviews (n = 2,416 question-answer pairs across ten interviews). Twenty-six percent of officers' utterances contained at least one interviewing tactic. When statements were paired with maximization, they were correlated with more reluctance than when they were not paired with an interviewing tactic. Contrary to predictions, support was also related to greater reluctance. Open-ended (recall) questions and statements were associated with greater reluctance than closed-ended (recognition) questions. The results highlight the importance of understanding the context in which interviewing strategies are employed when assessing the relation between interviewer behavior and interviewee reluctance.

Identifying novel forms of reluctance in commercially sexually exploited adolescents

BACKGROUND

Research has largely overlooked expressions of reluctance in commercially sexually exploited adolescent ("CSEA") victims. This is problematic because gaining information from known victims is of the utmost importance in order to better serve the needs of current and potential future victims.

OBJECTIVE

The current study proposes a novel conceptualization of reluctance based on CSEA victims' transcripts from police interviews and courtroom examinations.

PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING

The study examined police interviews (n = 8 victims, 1558 utterances) and courtroom transcripts (n = 6 victims, 1961 utterances) conducted with female CSEA victims aged 15-17 years old (M_age = 16.29). The victims were associated with the same trafficker and were thus interviewed by the same group of police officers, and for those who testified, were questioned by the same lawyers in court.

RESULTS

Sixteen reluctance tactics were identified, including several that have been overlooked in previous literature. The current reluctance measure identified more reluctance than previous studies' reluctance measures. Reluctance was much more common in police interviews (26.4%; p < .001) than in court (5.5%), and if victims were more reluctant in the police interviews, they were less likely to appear in court (p = .001).

CONCLUSIONS

These findings have implications for future conceptualizations of reluctance, and illustrate the importance of considering the age of the victim and the circumstances under which the victim is questioned in identifying reluctance.

The Science-Based Pathways to Understanding False Confessions and Wrongful Convictions

This review shows that there is now a solid scientific evidence base for the "expert" evaluation of disputed confession cases in judicial proceedings. Real-life cases have driven the science by stimulating research into "coercive" police questioning techniques, psychological vulnerabilities to false confession, and the development and validation of psychometric tests of interrogative suggestibility and compliance. Mandatory electronic recording of police interviews has helped with identifying the situational and personal "risk factors" involved in false confessions and how these interact. It is the combination of a detailed evaluation and analysis of real-life cases, experimental work, and community (and prison/police station) studies that have greatly advanced the science over the past 40 years. In this review, the story of the development of the science during this "golden era" is told through the three established error pathways to false confessions and wrongful convictions: misclassification, coercion, and contamination. A case study of a major miscarriage of justice is used to highlight the key issues at each stage of the error pathways and it shows the continued resistance of the judiciary to admit mistakes and learn from them. Science is a powerful platform from which to educate the police and the judiciary.

Translational Application of a Neuro-Scientific Multi-Modal Approach Into Forensic Psychiatric Evaluation: Why and How?

A prominent body of literature indicates that insanity evaluations, which are intended to provide influential expert reports for judges to reach a decision "beyond any reasonable doubt," suffer from a low inter-rater reliability. This paper reviews the limitations of the classical approach to insanity evaluation and the criticisms to the introduction of neuro-scientific approach in court. Here, we explain why in our opinion these criticisms, that seriously hamper the translational implementation of neuroscience into the forensic setting, do not survive scientific scrutiny. Moreover, we discuss how the neuro-scientific multimodal approach may improve the inter-rater reliability in insanity evaluation. Critically, neuroscience does not aim to introduce a brain-based concept of insanity. Indeed, criteria for responsibility and insanity are and should remain clinical. Rather, following the falsificationist approach and the convergence of evidence principle, the neuro-scientific multimodal approach is being proposed as a way to improve reliability of insanity evaluation and to mitigate the influence of cognitive biases on the formulation of insanity opinions, with the final aim to reduce errors and controversies.

ADHD and offending

OBJECTIVES

International studies have reported disproportionately higher rates of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) among youth and adult offenders across police custody, prison, probation and forensic mental health settings, estimated to fall at around 25%. This review aimed to investigate the presentation and vulnerabilities of this subpopulation of people with ADHD compared to those with ADHD in the general population and consider how this may impact on the approach to assessment and treatment in this population.

METHODOLOGY

A selective review of the extant literature was conducted to investigate how offenders with ADHD may present differently from their non-ADHD peers in their clinical presentation, criminogenic behaviour and psychological vulnerabilities.

RESULTS

Nearly all (around 96%) offenders with ADHD have additional comorbid problems, including mood, anxiety, conduct, substance use and personality disorders. Compared with offenders without ADHD, they become involved in the criminal justice system (CJS) at a younger age, have higher rates of recidivism, are more likely to make a false confession, engage in behavioural disturbances in custody, have health risk behaviours and a lower quality of life. Assessing and treating ADHD in this subpopulation may be more complex due to their presentation.

CONCLUSIONS

Offenders with ADHD are disadvantaged within the system by their ADHD symptoms being unrecognised and/or misunderstood; their diagnosis of ADHD may be missed or misdiagnosed. This is at cost to the individual, from both a health and rehabilitative perspective, as well as more broadly to society.

Examining College Student Perceptions of Criminal Justice Outcomes Among Persons With Mental Illness

An extensive body of literature has documented punitive responses to mental illness in the United States that have coalesced around arrest and incarceration. Similarly, studies have highlighted the lack of treatment options available to persons with mental illness, as well as the fact the persons with mental illness are particularly susceptible to offering false confessions. Research on perceptions of these realities is, however, comparatively limited. This study contributes to the literature through the use of survey methodology to examine the perceptions of college students at a mid-sized university in the Southeastern United States as they relate to criminal justice outcomes among persons with mental illness. Results of multinomial regression models suggest that these perceptions are shaped by factors such as political orientation, semester standing, and punitiveness.

Cumulative Disadvantage: A Psychological Framework for Understanding How Innocence Can Lead to Confession, Wrongful Conviction, and Beyond

False confessions are a contributing factor in almost 30% of DNA exonerations in the United States. Similar problems have been documented all over the world. We present a novel framework to highlight the processes through which innocent people, once misidentified as suspects, experience cumulative disadvantages that culminate in pernicious consequences. The cumulative-disadvantage framework details how the innocent suspect's naivete and the interrogator's presumption of guilt trigger a process that can lead to false confession, the aftereffects of which spread to corrupt evidence gathering, bias forensic analysis, and virtually ensure wrongful convictions at trial or through pressured false guilty pleas. The framework integrates nascent research underscoring the enduring effects of the accumulated disadvantages postconviction and even after exoneration. We synthesize findings from psychological science, corroborating naturalistic evidence, and relevant legal precedents to explain how an innocent suspect's disadvantages can accumulate through the actions of law enforcement, forensic examiners, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, juries, and appeals courts. We conclude with prescribed research directions that can lead to empirically driven reforms to address the gestalt of the multistage process.

The "appropriate adult": What they do and what they should do in police interviews with mentally disordered suspects

BACKGROUND

In almost all countries worldwide, the first point of contact with the criminal justice system is with the police. A large proportion of these individuals may have vulnerabilities, such as mental health difficulties. Given the complexities associated with vulnerable suspects, such interviews may be compromised, which could lead to a miscarriage of justice. In England and Wales, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984 and its accompanying Codes of Practice lay down requirements for interviewing vulnerable suspects and provide for attendance of "appropriate adults" to support communication between police and the vulnerable suspect. To date, however, their role has been underresearched.

AIMS/HYPOTHESES

To explore the role of appropriate adults in police interviews and test the hypotheses, first, that appropriate adults more commonly remain passive during interview than expected from guidance and, second, that any interventions are more likely than not to follow examples in current guidance.

METHODS

Transcripts of police interviews conducted with suspects with possible mental disorder and an appropriate adult present (N = 27) were analysed using a specially developed coding framework.

RESULTS

Appropriate adults were significantly more likely to remain passive than to intervene, even when current guidance would suggest intervention. When they did intervene, however, such interventions were significantly more likely than not to follow from guidance than the vulnerable suspect's needs. Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984.

CONCLUSIONS/IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE

In our sample, appropriate adults were not fulfilling their role as outlined in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984 and accompanying Codes of Practice; specifically, they appeared to know what to do but not when to do it. There is a heightened risk of a miscarriage of justice in such circumstances without improvements.

It takes two to self-disclose: Incremental theorists facilitate others' self-disclosure more than do entity theorists

OBJECTIVE

We tested the prediction that incremental theorists are more likely to facilitate others' self-disclosure than are entity theorists.

METHOD

We conducted three studies: (a) a field study that examined client's self-disclosure (N = 122; M_age  = 41.9, 67.8% woman; Israelis) during an intake interview with a professional therapist (N = 38; M_age  = 46.2, 84.20% woman; Israelis), (b) a survey of adults (N = 120; M_age  = 37.14, 57.6% female) who reported self-perceptions and behaviors during conversations and their perceptions of others' self-disclosure. In both studies participants reported their implicit theories, and (c) an experiment (N = 250; M_age  = 28.27, 56.6% female) in which participants whose implicit theories were manipulated reported their opening behaviors during a conversation and their perceptions of others' self-disclosure.

RESULTS

Ones' incremental theory of personality was positively related to another's self-disclosure, to one's opening and disclosure-encouraging behaviors, and was negatively related to one's perceptions of others' self-protection tendency. Furthermore, one's opening behaviors and perceptions of others' self-protection tendencies mediated the effect of one's incremental theory on others' self-disclosure.

CONCLUSION

Those who believe people can grow and change, can influence others to trust their personal information with them, even when the information is negative.

Investigative ignorance in international investigations: how United Nations Panels of Experts create new relations of power by seeking information

How do political investigations affect relations of power? Earlier studies have focused on the empowering effects of political knowledge - in contrast, I analyse how the pursuit of such knowledge makes the investigator dependent on others. I hypothesize that where the will to know empowers others, ignorance becomes a strategic alternative. This mechanism should play out strongly at the intersection of global governance and local political crises: here, global governance actors lack knowledge, investigations often constitute the first direct interaction between actors from both sides, and solidification of power (instead of empowering others) should be a central interest of global governance actors. I first explore the hypothesized mechanisms theoretically and develop a framework to analyse dependencies between investigators and their interlocutors. This framework then facilitates a within-case comparison of investigative approaches of United Nations Panels of Experts. The results support and elucidate the hypothesized mechanisms. The study shows how the analysis of social interaction can create new views of the much-studied relationship between knowledge and power.

PG. "I Did It, But Not Like That": Effects of Factually Incorrect Confessions on Juror Judgments

Several high-profile cases involving wrongful convictions have featured factually incorrect confessions (i.e., confessions that contradicted case facts). The current research investigated the effects of factually incorrect confessions on juror judgments. In Experiment 1, participants read a trial transcript, containing either no confession, a factually correct confession, or a factually incorrect confession after a 1-hour or 10-hour interrogation. Afterwards, participants judged the coerciveness of the confession, guilt of the suspect and named accomplice, and strength of the prosecution's case. Experiment 2 used confessions with different factual errors and different interrogation lengths. Participants made the same legal judgments. In both experiments, participants rated a factually incorrect confession as more coerced than a factually correct confession. Participants fully discounted factually incorrect confessions when evaluating a defendant's guilt. However, compared to conditions with no confession, participants perceived a named accomplice as guiltier and the prosecution's case as stronger when the defendant provided a factually incorrect confession.

Passing the Threshold of One Justice System to the Next: Challenges of Emerging Young Adults in Hong Kong's Adult Criminal Justice Process

In many criminal justice systems, there is a clear separation for juvenile and adult defendants. However, those in between, referred to as emerging young adult defendants (ages 18-25 years), are treated as adult defendants despite a growing recognition that emerging adulthood is a distinct period in the life course. The aim of this present study is to investigate the experiences and challenges faced by emerging young adult defendants ( N = 25) in Hong Kong's adult criminal justice process. Through in-depth semistructured interviews, it was found that emerging young adult defendants demonstrated a lack of understanding regarding their rights and the legal procedures, faced stress in being caught up in the criminal justice process, and were susceptible to influence by others, particularly family members, in making legal decisions. Implications and future directions of study are discussed.

Unmaking a murderer: behaviour sequence analysis of false confessions

The causes of false confessions are an important issue in legal studies and forensics. Recent advances in DNA testing have increased the number of proven false confessions; however, there are probably many cases without scientific evidence to refute the guilty verdict. The current research provides a novel approach to understand the structure and process of police interrogation techniques, in the United States behaviour sequence analysis. This method allows complex interactions in interrogations to be broken down and the progression of techniques analysed clearly. A case study is provided of an individual who confessed to a series of very serious crimes. The results show that several psychological techniques, such as leading statements, pressure, empathy, and inducements, are used, in increasing frequency, which resulted in the suspect's confession. This research provides support for behaviour sequence analysis as a new method to understand the structure of police interrogations and how psychological techniques may be used to gain false confessions.

The prevalence of false confessions in experimental laboratory simulations: A meta-analysis

We assessed experimental false confession studies using a meta-analysis to evaluate the prevalence of false confessions across methodologies and several moderator variables. False confessions were more likely in typing task studies than in collaborative or individual cheating studies. In typing studies, speed of typing did not affect false confession rates, but placement of the forbidden key in locations that rendered errors less plausible lowered the false confession rates. False-evidence ploys increased the likelihood of false confessions. We explore implications for courts, expert witnesses, scholars, and police interrogators.

Psychological Perspectives on Interrogation

Proponents of “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the United States have claimed that such methods are necessary for obtaining information from uncooperative terrorism subjects. In the present article, we offer an informed, academic perspective on such claims. Psychological theory and research shows that harsh interrogation methods are ineffective. First, they are likely to increase resistance by the subject rather than facilitate cooperation. Second, the threatening and adversarial nature of harsh interrogation is often inimical to the goal of facilitating the retrieval of information from memory and therefore reduces the likelihood that a subject will provide reports that are extensive, detailed, and accurate. Third, harsh interrogation methods make lie detection difficult. Analyzing speech content and eliciting verifiable details are the most reliable cues to assessing credibility; however, to elicit such cues subjects must be encouraged to provide extensive narratives, something that does not occur in harsh interrogations. Evidence is accumulating for the effectiveness of rapport-based information-gathering approaches as an alternative to harsh interrogations. Such approaches promote cooperation, enhance recall of relevant and reliable information, and facilitate assessments of credibility. Given the available evidence that torture is ineffective, why might some laypersons, policymakers, and interrogation personnel support the use of torture? We conclude our review by offering a psychological perspective on this important question.

Negative Self-Disclosure on the Web: The Role of Guilt Relief

In this paper, we suggest people use anonymous online forums as platforms for self-disclosing actions they feel guilty about—such as transgressions and unethical behaviors—with the goal of achieving guilt relief through others’ reactions. We support this proposition by analyzing field data extracted from Yahoo Answers, an online question-and-answer website. Our analysis shows the level of guilt relief an answer is expected to offer the “asker” (the self-disclosing person) is positively associated with the asker’s likelihood of selecting that answer as the “best” response to the self-disclosure. Furthermore, following receipt of a guilt-relieving answer, an asker becomes less likely to engage in prosocial behavior, which is another type of guilt-relieving action.

The Killing of Kitty Genovese: What Else Does This Case Tell Us?

Well known in popular culture, the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in Queens, New York, became famous because not one of an alleged 38 bystanders called police until it was too late. Within psychology, this singular event inspired the study of bystander intervention. With the spotlight of history focused on Ms. Genovese and bystanders, other events, also profound for what they tell us about human social behavior, have escaped public notice. Based on archival records and current interviews, this article describes the three issues linked to Genovese. First, three false confessions, taken from two individuals, led to their wrongful convictions and imprisonment. One of these individuals was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in Miranda v. Arizona (1966); the other individual is alive and well and wants to clear his name. Second, the narrative of the unresponsive bystander was initiated by police, not by journalists, in response to probing questions about one of these confessions. Finally, there is the ironic fact, which somehow has slipped through the cracks, that the killer of Genovese was ultimately captured as a result of the intervention of two bystanders.

False confessions

As illustrated by numerous cases in recent years, DNA exonerations of innocent individuals have cast a spotlight on the counterintuitive problem of false confessions. Studying the underlying psychology scientists have found that (1) innocent people are often targeted for interrogation because police make erroneous but confident judgments of deception; (2) certain interrogation techniques-namely, lengthy sessions, presentations of false evidence, and minimization themes that imply leniency-increase the risk that innocent people will confess; (3) certain individuals are particularly vulnerable to influence-notably, those with mental health problems or intellectual impairments, which render them overly compliant or suggestible, and children and adolescents, who exhibit 'immaturity of judgment'; (4) confession evidence is highly persuasive in court as a matter of common sense, increasing perceptions of guilt, even among judges and juries who see the confession as coerced, and even at times when the confession is contradicted by exculpatory information; (5) Miranda rights to silence and to counsel are not sufficiently protective, so proposals for reform have centered on the mandatory recording of interrogations, from start to finish, and a shift toward using investigative interviewing-a less confrontational, less deceptive means of questioning suspects. WIREs Cogn Sci 2017, 8:e1439. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1439 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

Detecting Deception within Small Groups: A Literature Review

Investigators often have multiple suspects to interview in order to determine whether they are guilty or innocent of a crime. Nevertheless, co-offending has been significantly neglected within the deception detection literature. The current review is the first of its kind to discuss co-offending and the importance of examining the detection of deception within groups. Groups of suspects can be interviewed separately (individual interviewing) or simultaneously (collective interviewing) and these differing interviewing styles are assessed throughout the review. The review emphasizes the differences between lone individuals and groups. It focuses on the theoretical implications of group deceit and the reasons why groups need to be understood in terms of investigative interviewing and deception detection if all types of crime-related incidents are to be recognized and dealt with appropriately. Group strategies, consistency within- and between-statements, joint memory, and group dynamics are referred to throughout the review and the importance of developing interview protocols specifically for groups is discussed. The review concludes by identifying the gaps in the literature and suggesting ideas for future research, highlighting that more research is required if we are to obtain a true understanding of the deception occurring within groups and how best to detect it.

Memory distrust syndrome, confabulation and false confession

There are three types of false confessions: 'voluntary', 'pressured-compliant' and 'pressured-internalized'. On the basis of case studies, in the early 1980s Gudjonsson and MacKeith coined the term 'memory distrust syndrome (MDS)' to describe a condition where people develop profound distrust of their memory and become susceptible to relying on external cues and suggestions from others. Memory distrust can, under certain circumstances, lead to a false confession, particularly of the pressured-internalized type, described as 'confabulation'. This article reviews the evidence for the condition and the psychological mechanism and processes involved. A heuristic model is then presented of a 32 year old man who falsely confessed to murder whilst in police custody. The key elements of the model involve the impact of 'contextual risk factors' (i.e., isolation, long and persistent guilt presumptive interrogation, and high emotional intensity) on 'enduring' vulnerability and 'acute state' factors. The detainee had kept a detailed diary whilst in solitary confinement that provided a unique insight into the gradual development of a MDS, his mental state, and thinking process. This type of false confession is apparently quite rare, but it can occur in intellectually able and educated individuals and involves 'delayed' rather than 'immediate' suggestibility.

Sleep deprivation and false confessions

False confession is a major contributor to the problem of wrongful convictions in the United States. Here, we provide direct evidence linking sleep deprivation and false confessions. In a procedure adapted from Kassin and Kiechel [(1996) Psychol Sci 7(3):125-128], participants completed computer tasks across multiple sessions and repeatedly received warnings that pressing the "Escape" key on their keyboard would cause the loss of study data. In their final session, participants either slept all night in laboratory bedrooms or remained awake all night. In the morning, all participants were asked to sign a statement, which summarized their activities in the laboratory and falsely alleged that they pressed the Escape key during an earlier session. After a single request, the odds of signing were 4.5 times higher for the sleep-deprived participants than for the rested participants. These findings have important implications and highlight the need for further research on factors affecting true and false confessions.

Factors that influence the generation of autobiographical memory conjunction errors

The constructive nature of memory is generally adaptive, allowing us to efficiently store, process and learn from life events, and simulate future scenarios to prepare ourselves for what may come. However, the cost of a flexibly constructive memory system is the occasional conjunction error, whereby the components of an event are authentic, but the combination of those components is false. Using a novel recombination paradigm, it was demonstrated that details from one autobiographical memory (AM) may be incorrectly incorporated into another, forming AM conjunction errors that elude typical reality monitoring checks. The factors that contribute to the creation of these conjunction errors were examined across two experiments. Conjunction errors were more likely to occur when the corresponding details were partially rather than fully recombined, likely due to increased plausibility and ease of simulation of partially recombined scenarios. Brief periods of imagination increased conjunction error rates, in line with the imagination inflation effect. Subjective ratings suggest that this inflation is due to similarity of phenomenological experience between conjunction and authentic memories, consistent with a source monitoring perspective. Moreover, objective scoring of memory content indicates that increased perceptual detail may be particularly important for the formation of AM conjunction errors.

Regulatory adaptations for delivering information: The case of confession

Prior to, or concurrent with, the encoding of concepts into speech, the individual faces decisions about whether, what, when, how, and with whom to communicate. Compared to the existing wealth of linguistic knowledge however, we know little of the mechanisms that govern the delivery and accrual of information. Here we focus on a fundamental issue of communication: The decision whether to deliver information. Specifically, we study spontaneous confession to a victim. Given the costs of social devaluation, offenders are hypothesized to refrain from confessing unless the expected benefits of confession (e.g. enabling the victim to remedially modify their course of action) outweigh its marginal costs-the victim's reaction, discounted by the likelihood that information about the offense has not leaked. The logic of welfare tradeoffs indicates that the victim's reaction will be less severe and, therefore, less costly to the offender, with decreases in the cost of the offense to the victim and, counter-intuitively, with increases in the benefit of the offense to the offender. Data from naturalistic offenses and experimental studies supported these predictions. Offenders are more willing to confess when the benefit of the offense to them is high, the cost to the victim is low, and the probability of information leakage is high. This suggests a conflict of interests between senders and receivers: Often, offenders are more willing to confess when confessions are less beneficial to the victims. An evolutionary-computational framework is a fruitful approach to understanding the factors that regulate communication.

Eliciting Reliable Information in Investigative Interviews

Interviews are an important part of investigations, as the information obtained from interviewees generates leads and evidence. However, for several psychological reasons, even cooperative victims and witnesses do not spontaneously report all the information they know, and their accounts may incorporate errors. Furthermore, suspects often deliberately withhold information or may attempt to mislead the interviewer. First, known psychological factors promote complete and accurate reports by cooperative witnesses and victims. Such factors relate to the social dynamics between the witness and interviewer (e.g., developing rapport), the interviewee’s and the interviewer’s cognitive processes, and communication between the witness and interviewer. Empirical research examines interviewing techniques that incorporate these interviewing principles. Second, some suspects may be reluctant to volunteer information. Typically, two interview styles encourage suspects to talk: An information-gathering style seeks to establish rapport with interviewees and uses open-ended exploratory questions to elicit information and establish guilt. An accusatorial style uses closed-ended confirmatory questions to elicit confessions. The former approach performs better at eliciting accurate information and true confessions. In any interview, the ability to detect truth from deceit is important. Many lie detection techniques are based on listening to speech or observing behavior, but only some discriminate between truth and deceit.

Why Errors in Alibis Are Not Necessarily Evidence of Guilt

Laypeople, police, and prosecutors tend to believe that a suspect’s alibi, if truthful, should remain consistent over time (see Burke, Turtle, & Olson, 2007 ; Culhane & Hosch 2012 ; Dysart & Strange, 2012 ). However, there is no empirical evidence to support this assumption. We investigated (a) whether some features of an alibi – such as what was happening, who with, where, and for how long – are more likely to produce errors than others; and (b) whether consistency in alibi stories is correlated with particular phenomenological characteristics of the alibi such as a person’s confidence and sense of reliving the event. We asked participants to imagine they were suspected of a crime and to provide their truthful alibi for an afternoon 3 weeks prior and to complete questions regarding the phenomenological characteristics of their memory. We also asked participants to locate evidence of their actual whereabouts for the critical period. Participants returned a week later, presented their evidence, re-told their alibi, and re-rated the phenomenological characteristics of the alibi. Our results revealed that participants were largely inconsistent across all aspects of their alibi, but there was variability across the different features. In addition, those who were inconsistent were less confident, recollected the time period in less detail and less vividly, and were less likely to claim to remember the time period. We conclude that inconsistencies are a normal byproduct of an imperfect memory system and thus should not necessarily arouse suspicion that a suspect is lying.

False memories for aggressive acts

Can people develop false memories for committing aggressive acts? How does this process compare to developing false memories for victimhood? In the current research we used a simple false feedback procedure to implant false memories for committing aggressive acts (causing a black eye or spreading malicious gossip) or for victimhood (receiving a black eye). We then compared these false memories to other subjects' true memories for equivalent events. False aggressive memories were all too easy to implant, particularly in the minds of individuals with a proclivity towards aggression. Once implanted, the false memories were indistinguishable from true memories for the same events, on several dimensions, including emotional content. Implications for aggression-related memory more generally as well as false confessions are discussed.