Psychology of Confessions

1. BRIEFLY describe what happened in the Central Park Jogger case (2 points)
In 1989, a female jogger was beaten, raped, and then left to die in Central Park (Kassin, 2005). The police arrested 5 boys from age 14-16 years old and of African American or Hispanic descent. The police induced confessions from these five boys and they were convicted for the crime. However, 13 years later, a man named Matias Reyes confessed voluntarily to committing the crime and DNA evidence proved his confession to be the truth. This case represents the problem of wrongful convictions that plague the justice system.
2. What verbal cues, nonverbal cues, and behavioral attitudes are investigators directed to attend to by Inbau, Reid, Buckley, and Jane? How accurate do they claim investigators can be if they attend to these cues? (3 points)
According to Inbau, Reid, Buckley, and Jane the verbal cues that investigators are directed to attend to include qualified or rehearsed responses to questions (As cited by Kassin, 2005). The nonverbal cues can include slouching, frozen posture, and gaze aversion. The behavioral cues may include being guarded, unconcerned, or anxious. In attending to these cues, investigators can be trained to achieve an 85% accuracy level in judging truth and deception.
3. Summarize the laboratory research on people’s performance in detecting deception (3 points)
Research has been unable to support claims that individuals are able to achieve higher than average levels of performance when judging or detecting truth and deception (Kassin, 2005). From the experiments conducted, most individuals were shown to perform not better than at a level of chance. The training programs used were only shown to produce small improvements which were...

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...ons can be useful in many areas. These areas can include questions that may be raised about whether a suspect was read their rights and the rights were waived (Kassin, 2005). Also the recorded account could show whether the interrogators used physical intimidation, if the suspect was cooperative or not, or if any threats or promises were implied. Also, the recording could provide whether the details of the confession were from the suspect or the police. All of these issues are resolvable with a videotaped account of interrogations, and they would also increase the fact-finding accuracy of the juries and judges in the trial.

References
Kassin, S. (2005). On the psychology of confessions: Does innocence put innocents at risk? American Psychologist, 60(3), 215-228. Retrieved from http://undergrad.floridatechonline.com/Courses/PSY3100/Critical_Reading_Kassin.pdf