Social Psychology Commons^™

Who Can Take The Heat? Investigating The Relationships Between Psychopathy, Stress, And Behavioral Reactions To A Mock Interrogation Situation, Jonathon M. Hall

Honors College Theses

The primary purpose of this experiment was to test whether individuals higher in psychopathy would experience less stress during a mock interrogation situation compared to individuals lower in psychopathy. Psycholegal experiments using a mock interrogation paradigm have focused on the situational conditions that increase the likelihood of false confessions. To our knowledge these studies have not investigated factors that predict a guilty participant’s refusal to confess. We chose to investigate whether psychopathy would predict refusal to confess when guilty of a mock crime. Psychopathy is a personality disorder often characterized by callous affect, interpersonal manipulation, and impulsiveness. In addition, individuals …