Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

Suggestibility: Empirical Findings 409
After being administered the GSS 1 the participants entered the reaction time
experiment where the attempt was made to induce a false confession. In relation
to the false confession there were three measures of the effects of social
influence: compliance, internalization and confabulation. Compliance refers to
the number of participants who signed the false confession statement, which
read ‘I hit the ALT key and caused the computer to crash. Data were lost’. Internalization
refers to participants telling another experimenter (i.e. the one
who administered the GSS 1 and the maturity measures) that they had hit the
wrong key and ruined the program. Confabulation was measured by asking
the participants to retrace their steps and it was scored when the participant
claimed to recall specific details, such as hitting the ALT key.
Half of the participants were after the experiment presented with a faked
computer print-out ‘showing that they had pressed the ALT key, which they
had specifically been warned not to touch’. The purpose of this manipulation
was to test the impact of the presentation of false evidence. The main findings
were as follows.
� 69% of the participants signed a confession statement accepting responsibility
for pressing the wrong key, when in reality none had pressed the wrong
key. Of these 30% internalized the false confession and 19% confabulated.
� Age, gender and suggestibility were significantly related to at least one of
the three dependent measures; there was no effect for maturity levels.
� The younger the participants the more likely they were to make a false
confession (the percentages were 78%, 72% and 59% for the three age groups
in ascending order of age).
� Age was not significantly related to internalization and confabulation. This
finding suggests that younger persons are more compliant with authority
even without questioning (i.e. mere confrontation and accusation was
sufficient).
� In contrast to the findings by Kassin and Kiechel (1996), where no gender
differences were noted, in the present experiment females were significantly
less likely than males to sign a false confession statement. The
explanation put forward by the researcher was that the person who asked
for the signed confession was always a male. Interestingly though, the male
participants scored significantly higher than the females on Yield 1, Yield
2 and Total Suggestibility.
� There was a significant relationship between Yield 1, Yield 2 and Total
Suggestibility and making a false confession, even after controlling for age
differences in the confession rate. Internalization was significantly related
to Yield 1. There was no significant effect for Shift or free memory recall.
Confabulation on the GSS 1 was related to internalization and confabulation
in relation to the false confession.
� The presentation of the faked evidence (i.e. the computer print-out) resulted
in significantly more internalized false confessions.
This study supports the importance of suggestibility as a vulnerability factor
for making a false confession and the relationship between internalization of
the false confession and GSS 1 confabulation is consistent with the findings
of Sigurdsson and Gudjonsson (1996) in a real-life interrogation context. The