Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Investigating True And False Confessions Within A Novel Experimental Paradigm, Melissa B. Russano

Melissa B. Russano, Ph.D.

The primary goal of the current study was to develop a novel experimental paradigm with which to study the influence of psychologically based interrogation techniques on the likelihood of true and false confessions. The paradigm involves guilty and innocent participants being accused of intentionally breaking an experimental rule, or ‘‘cheating.’’ In the first demonstration of this paradigm, we explored the influence of two common police interrogation tactics: minimization and an explicit offer of leniency, or a ‘‘deal.’’ Results indicated that guilty persons were more likely to confess than innocent persons, and that the use of minimization and the offer of …