Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

192 A Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions
of guilt. External pressures weaken the ego’s ability to fight and cope with pressure,
whilst dependency needs and childhood hostilities are re-activated by the
prison environment and produce guilt, which acts as an internal pressure to
confess.
Cunningham (1973) gives an excellent illustration of how unresolved childhood
conflicts were identified and exploited by the Chinese. Each prisoner was
required to write out a detailed autobiography of his or her childhood, from
which psychological weaknesses and vulnerabilities were identified. These were
subsequently used by the Chinese to create stress and induce feelings of guilt.
Schein, Schneier and Barker discuss a number of theories relevant to persuasive
interrogation, which they believe fall under the general heading of
‘sociopsychological theories’. These include theories that focus on the selfconcept
and identity (Lifton, 1956), cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957),
group pressure (Asch, 1951, 1952) and differences between ‘internalization’,
‘identification’ and ‘compliance’ (Kelman, 1958).
According to Schein, Schneier and Barker, changes in self-concept and identity
are central to explaining ‘the breaking point’ and why prisoners’ beliefs
and values changed, but theories relying on this explanation (see e.g. Lifton,
1956) fail to specify how the change comes about. ‘Breaking point’ is viewed
by Schein, Schneier and Barker as a psychological phenomenon in which selfconcept
is central and where prisoners can be trained to resist interrogative
pressure (p. 233).
Festinger’s (1957) theory of dissonance has implications for confessions because
it postulates that it is the behavioural commitment of the confession
that produces dissonance (i.e. a special type of conflict), which is in turn reduced
by change in belief and attitudes. Schein, Schneier and Barker point out
several limitations of dissonance theory when it is applied to coercive persuasion.
For example, they view the theory as oversimplifying the thinking process,
because changes in attitudes and beliefs may precede as well as follow a
confession.
Early workers in the field of social influence did not make a clear conceptual
or theoretical distinction between private acceptance of information and
compliance (McCauley, 1989). The experimental work of Kelman (1958) indicated
three distinct processes of social influence, which he labelled ‘compliance’,
‘identification’, and ‘internalization’. Compliance was said to occur when people
agreed with propositions without private acceptance for some instrumental
gain (i.e. in order to gain a reward or avoid punishment). Internalization implied
that people privately accepted the proposition offered and it became integrated
into their belief system. Identification occurred when people accepted influence
because they desired to emulate the agent of influence.
Schein, Schneier and Barker consider Kelman’s work to be an important contribution
to the understanding of coercive persuasion. Its main contribution is
to highlight different mechanisms of change that lead to different types of outcome.
The main problem seems to be that one does not know to what extent
the three distinct processes may overlap or interact. For example, it is possible
that compliance may lead to identification or internalization? Similarly,
identification may lead to internalization or compliance.