Bluffed by the dealer: Distinguishing false pleas from false confessions.

Self-reported false confessions and false guilty pleas among offenders with mental illness.

Persons with mental illness may be at risk for false admissions to police and to prosecutors because of the defining characteristics of mental illness, but potentially because of heightened recidivism rates and increased opportunities. We surveyed 1,249 offenders with mental disorders from six sites about false confessions (FCs) and false guilty pleas (FGPs). Self-reports of FC ranged from 9 to...

Internalized False Confessions

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...

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 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...