THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CONFESSION
In law, a confession is exceptionally powerful evidence – an irrefutable admission of guilt. But while most confessions are true, some people have been known to ‘confess’ to a crime they did not commit. Gudjonsson (2003) offers a catalogue of cases in which people have been imprisoned for long periods, or even executed, on the basis of a false confession. In the UK these infamous cases include those of the ‘Guildford Four’ and ‘Birmingham Six’, two court cases from the mid 1970s, in which four and six innocent people respectively received long prison sentences based on evidence that included false confessions. How often such cases arise is impossible to know – matters of guilt and innocence are not always clear-cut, and the discovery of a mistake in sentencing can take years to come to light. Undoubtedly, some such errors never do. Why people make false confessions, another issue raised by Münsterberg (1908), is a very ‘psychological’ question. A distinction has been drawn between two types of false confessio – voluntary and coerced. Coerced false confession can be broken down further into two sub-types – coerced–compliant and coerced– internalized false confessions.
VOLUNTARY FALSE CONFESSIONS
A voluntary false confession occurs when, in the absence of any obvious external pressure, an individual presents himself to the police and admits to a crime he did not commit. Kassin and Wrightsman (1985) suggest several possible reasons for this behaviour:
1. the desire for notoriety – it is a feature of many high-profile crimes that substantial numbers of people come forward to confess;
2. the individual may feel guilty about a previous event in his life, and believe he deserves to be punished;
3. inability to distinguish between fact and imagination, so internal thoughts of committing a crime become ‘real’ (this type of behaviour is often associated with major mental disorders such as schizophrenia);
4. the desire to protect someone else, such as a child or partner (this type of false confession can be coerced as well as voluntary).
Gudjonsson (2003) notes revenge as another motive that can lead to a false confession. In one case, a man made a false confession deliberately to waste police time as revenge for what he perceived as his previous wrongful treatment by the police. In contrast to voluntary false confessions, the essential element of a coerced confession is that the individual is persuaded to confess. As Kassin (1997) suggests, to understand coercion within the context of a false confession it is necessary to begin with the process of police interrogation.
INTERROGATIONAL TACTICS
The laws relating to the conduct of police interrogation of suspects vary from country to country. But there are some psychological principles that can be applied whenever one person is seeking information from another, irrespective of location. Suspects may spend time isolated in police cells before and during interrogation, an experience that can be frightening and stressful (Irving, 1986). For some, this situation may create psychological distress or exacerbate existing psychological and emotional conditions. Police interrogation manuals from both Britain (Walkley, 1987) and America (Inbau, Reid, & Buckley, 1986) tell us that, from a police perspective, the interrogator must overcome the suspect’s natural resistance to tell the truth, and so must be skilled in the use of strategies to persuade the suspect to confess. These interrogational tactics, based on the social psychology of conformity, obedience and persuasion (see chapter 18), increase the pressure on suspects so that they will fall into line with the interrogator’s view of events. The interrogator will do this by suggesting that they have the power to determine what charge will be brought, whether the suspect will receive bail or be remanded in custody, and whether to involve other people known to the suspect. The interrogator might also use persuasive tactics designed to encourage the suspect to confess, suggesting, for example, that there is evidence proving the case against the suspect, or that accomplices have confessed, or even, as Gudjonsson and MacKeith (1982) noted, by producing dummy files of evidence.
More recently, there have been various legal changes in the rules governing the conduct of interrogations to eliminate dubious practice (Gudjonsson, 2003). There is guarded optimism that the changes are having the desired effect. But in such a highly charged and complex arena, where there are often pressures on the police to solve a high-profile crime, it can be difficult to be certain of how the minutiae of social exchanges during interrogation influence the final outcome.
COERCED FALSE CONFESSIONS
Gudjonsson and Clark (1986) suggested that a suspect will come to an interrogation with a general cognitive ‘set’ that may be hostile, suspicious or cooperative. This cognitive set (itself related to factors such as intelligence, level of stress and degree of previous experience of police questioning) will influence the suspect’s appraisal of the situation, and so affect the suspect’s strategy for coping with the interrogation.
Gudjonsson and Clark describe two styles of initial coping response:
1. a logical, realistic approach, which seeks actively to deal with the situation and may lead to active resistance (which may weaken as the interrogation progresses) to the interrogator’s persuasion to confess; and
2. a passive, helpless stance, which avoids confrontation with the interrogator, and so reduces stress but may lead to increased susceptibility to the interrogator’s persuasive tactics.
During questioning, the suspect has to recall information, but she must also make some difficult decisions. She has to decide how confident she is in her memories, what answer to give the interrogator (which may not be the same as the suspect’s private knowledge of events) and whether she trusts the interrogator. Resistant suspects are likely to hold onto their own version of the truth, rebutting persuasive attempts to bring them to confess. Coerced suspects may change their version of the truth so as to agree with the interrogator.
Where a false confession ensues, this process of coerced agreement can be seen in two distinct ways:
1. The suspect remains aware that her confession and her private, internal knowledge of the event disagree, but the suspect nevertheless comes to agree with the interrogator.
This is called a coerced–compliant false confession.
2. In some circumstances, the suspect’s internal account of events actually changes to fall into line with the interrogator, so that, both publicly and privately, the suspect comes to agree with the interrogator’s version of events. This is called a coerced–internalized false confession.
Coerced compliance
The notion of compliance has a long history in psychological research (Asch, 1956; Milgram, 1974; see also chapter 18). The compliant suspect copes with the pressures of interrogation by coming to agree with the interrogator (even while knowing that the agreement is incorrect, in the case of the coerced–compliant false confession). This might happen for several reasons: the suspect might wish to please the interrogator, avoid further detention and interrogation, avoid physical harm (real or imagined) or strike a deal with the interrogator that brings some reward for making a confession (Vennard, 1984).
Coerced internalization
The essential element in a coerced–internalized confession is the suspect’s coming to believe that their own memory for events is incorrect and that the police version must therefore be true. Kassin (1997) has drawn the analogy between this type of confession and the phenomenon of false memories. There are perhaps also parallels with the notion of cognitive dissonance, (whereby a person comes to change their attitudes to make them more consistent with their behaviour) and the kind of obedience which occurs towards authority figures (discussed in chapters 1 and 18) may well also be relevant here.
Drawing on the psychology of suggestibility (Gheorghiu et al., 1989), Gudjonsson (1987) developed the notion of interrogative suggestibility – the extent to which, during intense questioning, people accept information communicated by the questioner and so change their responses. [interrogative suggestibility the degree to which individuals are inclined to accept as true the type of information that is communicated by the questioner during interrogation] The powerful combination of situational stress, individual factors such as self-perception, intelligence and memory ability, and current psychological state may trigger suggestibility to misleading information on the part of the suspect, and so produce a false confession.
In law, a confession is exceptionally powerful evidence – an irrefutable admission of guilt. But while most confessions are true, some people have been known to ‘confess’ to a crime they did not commit. Gudjonsson (2003) offers a catalogue of cases in which people have been imprisoned for long periods, or even executed, on the basis of a false confession. In the UK these infamous cases include those of the ‘Guildford Four’ and ‘Birmingham Six’, two court cases from the mid 1970s, in which four and six innocent people respectively received long prison sentences based on evidence that included false confessions. How often such cases arise is impossible to know – matters of guilt and innocence are not always clear-cut, and the discovery of a mistake in sentencing can take years to come to light. Undoubtedly, some such errors never do. Why people make false confessions, another issue raised by Münsterberg (1908), is a very ‘psychological’ question. A distinction has been drawn between two types of false confessio – voluntary and coerced. Coerced false confession can be broken down further into two sub-types – coerced–compliant and coerced– internalized false confessions.
VOLUNTARY FALSE CONFESSIONS
A voluntary false confession occurs when, in the absence of any obvious external pressure, an individual presents himself to the police and admits to a crime he did not commit. Kassin and Wrightsman (1985) suggest several possible reasons for this behaviour:
1. the desire for notoriety – it is a feature of many high-profile crimes that substantial numbers of people come forward to confess;
2. the individual may feel guilty about a previous event in his life, and believe he deserves to be punished;
3. inability to distinguish between fact and imagination, so internal thoughts of committing a crime become ‘real’ (this type of behaviour is often associated with major mental disorders such as schizophrenia);
4. the desire to protect someone else, such as a child or partner (this type of false confession can be coerced as well as voluntary).
Gudjonsson (2003) notes revenge as another motive that can lead to a false confession. In one case, a man made a false confession deliberately to waste police time as revenge for what he perceived as his previous wrongful treatment by the police. In contrast to voluntary false confessions, the essential element of a coerced confession is that the individual is persuaded to confess. As Kassin (1997) suggests, to understand coercion within the context of a false confession it is necessary to begin with the process of police interrogation.
INTERROGATIONAL TACTICS
The laws relating to the conduct of police interrogation of suspects vary from country to country. But there are some psychological principles that can be applied whenever one person is seeking information from another, irrespective of location. Suspects may spend time isolated in police cells before and during interrogation, an experience that can be frightening and stressful (Irving, 1986). For some, this situation may create psychological distress or exacerbate existing psychological and emotional conditions. Police interrogation manuals from both Britain (Walkley, 1987) and America (Inbau, Reid, & Buckley, 1986) tell us that, from a police perspective, the interrogator must overcome the suspect’s natural resistance to tell the truth, and so must be skilled in the use of strategies to persuade the suspect to confess. These interrogational tactics, based on the social psychology of conformity, obedience and persuasion (see chapter 18), increase the pressure on suspects so that they will fall into line with the interrogator’s view of events. The interrogator will do this by suggesting that they have the power to determine what charge will be brought, whether the suspect will receive bail or be remanded in custody, and whether to involve other people known to the suspect. The interrogator might also use persuasive tactics designed to encourage the suspect to confess, suggesting, for example, that there is evidence proving the case against the suspect, or that accomplices have confessed, or even, as Gudjonsson and MacKeith (1982) noted, by producing dummy files of evidence.
More recently, there have been various legal changes in the rules governing the conduct of interrogations to eliminate dubious practice (Gudjonsson, 2003). There is guarded optimism that the changes are having the desired effect. But in such a highly charged and complex arena, where there are often pressures on the police to solve a high-profile crime, it can be difficult to be certain of how the minutiae of social exchanges during interrogation influence the final outcome.
COERCED FALSE CONFESSIONS
Gudjonsson and Clark (1986) suggested that a suspect will come to an interrogation with a general cognitive ‘set’ that may be hostile, suspicious or cooperative. This cognitive set (itself related to factors such as intelligence, level of stress and degree of previous experience of police questioning) will influence the suspect’s appraisal of the situation, and so affect the suspect’s strategy for coping with the interrogation.
Gudjonsson and Clark describe two styles of initial coping response:
1. a logical, realistic approach, which seeks actively to deal with the situation and may lead to active resistance (which may weaken as the interrogation progresses) to the interrogator’s persuasion to confess; and
2. a passive, helpless stance, which avoids confrontation with the interrogator, and so reduces stress but may lead to increased susceptibility to the interrogator’s persuasive tactics.
During questioning, the suspect has to recall information, but she must also make some difficult decisions. She has to decide how confident she is in her memories, what answer to give the interrogator (which may not be the same as the suspect’s private knowledge of events) and whether she trusts the interrogator. Resistant suspects are likely to hold onto their own version of the truth, rebutting persuasive attempts to bring them to confess. Coerced suspects may change their version of the truth so as to agree with the interrogator.
Where a false confession ensues, this process of coerced agreement can be seen in two distinct ways:
1. The suspect remains aware that her confession and her private, internal knowledge of the event disagree, but the suspect nevertheless comes to agree with the interrogator.
This is called a coerced–compliant false confession.
2. In some circumstances, the suspect’s internal account of events actually changes to fall into line with the interrogator, so that, both publicly and privately, the suspect comes to agree with the interrogator’s version of events. This is called a coerced–internalized false confession.
Coerced compliance
The notion of compliance has a long history in psychological research (Asch, 1956; Milgram, 1974; see also chapter 18). The compliant suspect copes with the pressures of interrogation by coming to agree with the interrogator (even while knowing that the agreement is incorrect, in the case of the coerced–compliant false confession). This might happen for several reasons: the suspect might wish to please the interrogator, avoid further detention and interrogation, avoid physical harm (real or imagined) or strike a deal with the interrogator that brings some reward for making a confession (Vennard, 1984).
Coerced internalization
The essential element in a coerced–internalized confession is the suspect’s coming to believe that their own memory for events is incorrect and that the police version must therefore be true. Kassin (1997) has drawn the analogy between this type of confession and the phenomenon of false memories. There are perhaps also parallels with the notion of cognitive dissonance, (whereby a person comes to change their attitudes to make them more consistent with their behaviour) and the kind of obedience which occurs towards authority figures (discussed in chapters 1 and 18) may well also be relevant here.
Drawing on the psychology of suggestibility (Gheorghiu et al., 1989), Gudjonsson (1987) developed the notion of interrogative suggestibility – the extent to which, during intense questioning, people accept information communicated by the questioner and so change their responses. [interrogative suggestibility the degree to which individuals are inclined to accept as true the type of information that is communicated by the questioner during interrogation] The powerful combination of situational stress, individual factors such as self-perception, intelligence and memory ability, and current psychological state may trigger suggestibility to misleading information on the part of the suspect, and so produce a false confession.
No comments:
Post a Comment