Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

122 A Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions
Hilgendorf and Irving postulate that there are a number of social, psychological
and environmental factors that can affect, or indeed seriously impair, the
suspect’s decision-making during police interrogation. On occasions these factors
can undermine the reliability of the suspect’s confession. The most salient
factors are as follows.
i. The police can manipulate the social and self-approval utilities during interrogation
in order to influence the decision-making of the suspect. In particular,
the suspect’s feelings of competence and his self-esteem are readily
susceptible to manipulation. In view of the legitimate authority of police
officers,
. . . the interrogation situation contains pressures on the suspect to give excessive
emphasis in his decision-making to the approval or disapproval of the
interrogator, and to be extremely sensitive to all communications both verbal
and non-verbal which he receives from the interrogator (p. 81).
ii. The police interrogators can manipulate the suspect’s perceptions of the
likely outcome concerning a given course of action. One way of achieving
this is by minimizing the seriousness of the alleged offence and by altering
perceptions of the ‘cost’ associated with denial, resistance and deception.
iii. The police interrogators can impair the suspect’s ability to cope with information
processing and decision-making by various means. For example,
they can, through social, psychological and environmental manipulation,
increase the suspect’s existing level of anxiety, fear and compliance. Personal
threat is seen as an inherent part of any custodial interrogation and
it can by itself raise levels of anxiety. Unfamiliarity and uncertainty are
further anxiety-inducing factors. Social and physical isolation are seen as
potentially powerful influences:
The situation of physical confinement by the police supports and facilitates
these pressures and the effect becomes more pronounced the longer the total
period of detention in police custody (p. 81).
The Hilgendorf–Irving model relates to decision-making of suspects during custodial
interrogation. It is not, strictly speaking, a model of false confession. However,
the model highlights a number of important factors that can potentially
render a confession unreliable.
Psychoanalytic Models of Confession
Various psychodynamic models of the ‘need to confess’ have been proposed. Such
models rest upon the assumption that the feeling of guilt is the fundamental
cause of confessions and false confessions. These psychoanalytic models are
highly controversial as the theses upon which they are based have limited
acceptance in the scientific community.
Undoubtedly, the most detailed formulation is that offered by Reik (1959),
which is based on books and papers written in Germany in the 1920s. Reik’s