Divine Wind
Platinum Member
The studies mentioned in this article have some ramifications for those seeking to justify torture/"enhanced interrogation". Although torture isn't mentioned, it's obvious that it would be included
under "unpleasant interrogation".
False confessions: Silence is golden | The Economist
under "unpleasant interrogation".
False confessions: Silence is golden | The Economist
It seems hard to imagine that anyone of sound mind would take the blame for something he did not do. But several researchers have found it surprisingly easy to make people fess up to invented misdemeanours. Admittedly these confessions are taking place in a laboratory rather than an interrogation room, so the stakes might not appear that high to the confessor. On the other hand, the pressures that can be brought to bear in a police station are much stronger than those in a lab. The upshot is that it seems worryingly simple to extract a false confession from someonewhich he might find hard subsequently to retract.
....The number of innocent confessors jumps when various interrogation techniques are added to the mix. Several experiments, for example, have focused on the use of false evidence, as when police pretend they have proof of a persons guilt in order to encourage him to confess. This is usually permitted in the United States, though banned in Britain.
A second computer-crash test conducted by Dr Kassin and Dr Perillo used this technique. Another person in the room beside the experimenter said he saw the participant hitting the ALT key. In this case the confession rate jumped to 80% of innocent participants. Dr Horselenberg and his colleagues found something similar.
....All of which is both strange and rather alarming. Dr Kassin suggests that participants may have the naivethough commonbelief that the world is a just place, and that their innocence will emerge in the end, particularly in the case of the alleged video evidence. One participant, for example, told him, it made it easier [to sign the confession] because I had nothing to hide. The cameras would prove it.
In cases like that, confession is seen as a way to end an unpleasant interrogation. But it is a risky one. In the real world, such faith can be misplaced. Though a lot of jurisdictions require corroborating evidence, in practice self-condemnation is pretty damningand, it seems, surprisingly easy to induce.