Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

196 A Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions
voluntarily, but comes to give in to the demands and pressures of the interrogators
for some immediate instrumental gain. Kassin and Wrightsman (1985)
define compliance in the context of this type of false confession
...asanovert, public acquiescence to a social influence attempt in order to achieve
some immediate instrumental gain (p. 77).
In my experience, the perceived instrumental gain may include the following:
1. Being allowed to go home after confessing.
2. Bringing the interview to an end.
3. A means of coping with the demand characteristics, including the perceived
pressure, of the situation
4. Avoidance of being locked up in police custody. This is likely to be particularly
important in cases where people are severely phobic about being
locked up in a police station, often in a small cell, and in cases of drug addicts
who are motivated to expedite their release from custody to feed their
drug habit.
The suspect’s perceived immediate instrumental gain of confessing has mainly
to do with an escape from a stressful or an intolerable situation. The suspect
may be vaguely or fully aware of the potential consequences of making the
self-incriminating confession, but the perceived immediate gains outweigh the
perceived and uncertain long-term consequences. In addition, making a false
self-incriminating admission or confession is perceived as more desirable in
the short-term than the perceived ‘punishment’ of continued silence or denial.
Suspects may naively believe that somehow the truth will come out later, or
that their solicitor will be able to sort out their false confession.
Coerced–Internalized False Confessions
Coerced–internalized false confessions occur when suspects come to believe
during police interviewing that they have committed the crime they are accused
of, even though they have no actual memory of having committed the crime.
Gudjonsson and MacKeith (1982) argue that this kind of false confession results
from a ‘memory distrust syndrome’ (MDS), which can be defined as
a condition where people develop profound distrust of their memory recollections,
as a result of which they are particularly susceptible to relying on external cues
and suggestions.
The MDS is associated with two kinds of distinct condition.
The first kind is where the suspect has no memory of the alleged offence, even
if he or she committed it. This may be due to amnesia or alcohol induced memory
problems (Gudjonsson, 1992a; Santtila, Alkiora, Ekholm & Niemi, 1999).
In cases where suspects did not commit the crime they are accused of, they
may have no clear memory of not having done so. In other words, these people
have no clear recollection of what they were doing at the time the alleged