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False Confessions Study

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The Social Psychology of False Confessions: Compliance, Internalization, and Confabulation is a study conducted by Saul M. Kassin and Katherine L. Kichel of Williams College. This experiment explores social influence and the impact it has on confessions. As a fundamental right in the United States, people are given several rights and if broken, various punishments can be implemented. Criminal confessions are usually self-incriminating or coerced, yet these can easily be swayed by other factors. Social influence can directly affect suspects and can potentially cause people to confess to crimes they did not commit. At times, people tend to have a false sense of security in situations where interrogators show false evidence to convince the suspect …show more content…

Compliance was shown when the confederate wrote out what happened as a confession and asked the subject to sign. Internalization was tested when the subjects were recorded, the video was then analyzed to see if the subject felt any form of guilt for the computer crashing. Lastly, subjects were asked to reenact what had happened when they accidently hit the “ALT” key to show confabulation. Subjects in the fast pace/witness group all signed the confession, 65% thought they were guilty, and 35% confabulated details. After the experiment was over, the subjects were debriefed to explain the gist of the study. The slow pace group with no-witness control group were less likely to exhibit effects as opposed to the fast pace and witness group most likely show effects. The subjects were amazed how easily manipulated their perceptions of their own behavior could be. The results of the dependent variable show how the subject’s behavior was influenced by the independent variable. The results show that 69% of the 75 subjects (3 subjects did not count) signed the confession sheet when asked by the confederate. 28% exhibited signs of internalization. 9% confabulated details about what happened to support the false belief of them hitting the “ALT” key. With all the results taken into consideration, just having a witness in the room increased the rates of compliant and internalized

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