Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

Suggestibility: Empirical Findings 407
subsequently convicted. The subjects had all completed the GSS 1, the GCS
and the WAIS-R. The three groups differed highly significantly in their suggestibility
and compliance scores after IQ and memory recall on the GSS 1 had
been controlled for by an analysis of covariance.
Figure 14.1 shows that there is a linear relationship between the three groups
with regard to suggestibility (Total Score) and compliance. The alleged false
confessors had the highest suggestibility and compliance scores and resisters
the lowest. The other forensic cases obtained scores that fall in between the
other two groups on the two measures. Therefore, suggestibility and compliance
differentiate between ‘false confessors’, ‘forensic patients’ and ‘resisters’
in their own right and irrespective of differences in IQ. It is interesting to note
in this study that differences between the three groups were more marked with
regard to the suggestibility and compliance scores than intelligence. This suggests
that personality, as measured by suggestibility and compliance, may be a
better indicator of how people cope with police interrogation than intellectual
functioning.
Irving (1987) makes the interesting point that whether or not defendants
were able to cope with police interrogation may predict GSS 1 scores, but this
does not necessarily mean that GSS 1 scores will predict prospectively how
people will cope with police interrogation. This is a valid point to make, because
it is only by implication that one can suggest from the above mentioned studies
that the resisters’ low suggestibility and compliance scores and the alleged
false confessors’ high scores influenced their behaviour at the time of the police
interrogation.
No study has examined prospectively how low and high suggestibility and
compliance scorers are able to cope with police interrogation. However, in one
study (Pearse et al., 1998; see also Chapter 3), suggestibility was not found to
predict whether or not suspects confessed. The main reasons appeared to be
that detainees had decided prior to the interrogation about whether or not they
were going to confess and there was very little pressure used in the interview
to break down resistance (Pearse & Gudjonsson, 1996a).
SUGGESTIBILITY AND FALSE CONFESSIONS
Apart from individual case studies, which are presented in other parts of this
book, is there empirical evidence that suggestibility is related to the making
of false confessions? As discussed in Chapter 9, theoretically suggestibility
should be particularly relevant to coerced–internalized false confessions.
Only one study has investigated this issue. Sigurdsson and Gudjonsson (1996)
compared the personality scores, including suggestibility and compliance, of
62 prison inmates who claimed to have made a false confession in the past to
the police with the scores of other prison inmates. The false confessors were
found to be more anxious and personality disordered than the other inmates
and they had significantly higher mean GCS score (10.6 and 9.4, respectively),
but did not differ significantly with regard to intelligence, verbal memory or
suggestibility. A discriminant analysis performed on all the psychological tests