False Confessions and the Use of Incriminating Evidence

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 th...

Internalized False Confessions

The Social Psychology of False Confessions

Inspired by DNA exoneration cases and other wrongful convictions of innocent people who had confessed to crimes they did not commit, and drawing from basic principles of social perception and social influence, a vast body of research has focused on the social psychology of confessions. In particular, this article describes laboratory and field studies on the “Milgramesque” processes of police i...

False confessions: causes, consequences, and implications.

In the past two decades, hundreds of convicted prisoners have been exonerated by DNA and non-DNA evidence, revealing that police-induced false confessions are a leading cause of wrongful conviction of the innocent. In this article, empirical research on the causes and correlates of false confessions is reviewed. After a description of the three sequential processes that are responsible for the ...

False Confessions in the Lab: A Review

Intuitively, confession is a strong piece of evidence, because it appears unlikely that a suspect would confess to a crime he did not commit, thereby acting against his own best interest. Surprisingly, experimental studies show that innocent and well-educated individuals do tend to confess falsely when questioned about something they did not in fact do. In this contribution, an overview is pres...