False Confessions: A Summary

In this article, the authors examine how often false confessions occur by comparing the effects of age groups and reciprocity on individuals’ willingness to take the blame for another. It is very common that people who falsely confess to crimes are either mentally ill or adolescences. The authors in this article stated that “25 percent of U.S. Innocence Project’s DNA exonerations of wrongfully convicted individuals have involved false admissions of guilt.” This statistic was also backed up by modules six and seven that were discussed in the course. The problems with false confessions were hard to identify in the past because we did not have ways to identify DNA between two suspects like we have today. False confessing can contaminate how jurors can view evidence in a trial because they

The test is stopped and each student is interrogated by the experimenters giving them three opportunities to confess by signing a statement. Before the students are interrogated, some are pulled to the side by a confederate and are asked to take the blame since the consequences are not as crucial for them. Before the participants can answer the confederate walks off leaving them with an unanswered question. This tactic leaves the participant in a sticky situation because now they feel that they have to help. The method of this study is to look at the two factors, which are age group versus reciprocity. The age groups were the adolescences that were younger than 18 and the adults who were older than 18. The primary dependent variables were whether the participants took the blame and whether the participants admitted to the confederates of cheating. When the interrogations were occurring, the experimenters explained why people may cheat on a test involving intelligence, the seriousness of the situation, and explained the consequences of the participants. The participants had the chance of losing their credit for the day which was far lesser than what the confederates have to