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Background
False confessions are often the product of an interrogation process, and the method by which an interrogation is conducted likely affects both the rate of truthful confessions and false confessions. An optimal interrogation method will maximize the former and minimize the latter.
Objectives
The current study was a partial update and ext...
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Citations
... The greatest limitation of research about interrogation risk factors for false confessions centers on the artifice of research designs. Catlin et al. (2024) recently meta-analyzed 29 studies that examined an accusatorial as opposed to information-gathering purpose in the interrogation. Of these 29 studies, 23 used student research subjects, including some which involved students as the interrogators. ...
... The most recurring validity problem associated with false confessions research stems from ecological validity. Most studies of false confessions and in police interrogation tactics rely on participants who are undergraduates selected via convenience samples from the instructor's course(s) or from online participants (e.g., Blandon-Gitlin, Sperry, and Leo 2011;Catlin et al. 2024;Chojnacki, Cicchini, and White 2008;Leo and Liu 2009;Horselenberg et al. 2006;Kassin et al. 2017;Mindthoff et al. 2018;Russano et al. 2005;Shaw and Porter 2015;Strömwall, Hartwig, and Granhag 2006;van Bergen, Jelicic, and Merckelbach 2008). This is problematic because college students are neither police officers nor criminal defendants engaging in an interrogation with profound legal implications. ...
... Interviews occur early in an investigation, may be conducted in several environments, are free flowing and generally unstructured, and involve the investigator taking notes (Inbau et al. 2013). In contrast, an interrogation is accusatory, which has been criticized empirically (Catlin et al. 2024) and conceptually (Hirsch 2014). ...
Confessions are an important evidentiary part of the legal process, and false confessions have been notable contributors to wrongful convictions. However, academic research in the psychology and law field primarily relies on student or volunteer samples in staged exercises, methodological features that lack ecological validity for replicating police interrogation or the pressures distinctive to high stakes crime investigations. Here, we provide an integrative review of research and data on false confessions during police interrogations with distinctions of key concepts, relevant case law pertaining to confessions including several U.S. Supreme Court decisions, updating the typology of false confessions, the quantification of false confessions, risk factors for false confessions, interrogation risk factors for false confessions, validity threats to false confessions research, and recommended directions for informing courts and the law.
Conducting an interview can be especially challenging with suspects from cultures different from the interviewer’s own. Previous studies show that a suspect’s culture and communication style (e.g., collectivism/individualism & high/low-context) may affect their response to the interview techniques used by the interviewer. The current study aimed to explore and compare the perception of common interview techniques between two cultures, Indonesian (high-context culture; n = 155) and Dutch (low-context culture; n = 125). After reading a vignette of a fictional crime, participants estimated the likelihood of the suspect giving information in response to various interview techniques. An exploratory factor analysis revealed a five-factor model of interviewing: Humanity, Dominance/Control , Empathy/Perspective-taking, Rapport and Guilt-focused . Indonesian participants perceived the Dominance/Control category as more likely to elicit information from the suspect than did their Dutch counterparts. Moreover, Empathy/Perspective-taking was perceived to be more effective in eliciting information by the Dutch participants than by the Indonesian participants. An examination of the mean scores revealed that both groups perceived Dominance/Control and Guilt-focused techniques as being somewhat effective. The findings indicate that an interviewee’s culture could well play a role in how they respond to the interviewer’s approach. Therefore, the cultural background of the suspect should be taken into consideration while preparing for the interview and also during the interview. Raising more awareness of the consequences of harsher interviewing techniques may also be beneficial.
