“Midnight Confessions”: The Effect of Chronotype Asynchrony on Admissions of Wrongdoing

Abstract

Confession evidence is highly incriminating in court. We examined the interaction between chronotype and time of day on the confession decisions of 60 participants using an experimental paradigm. Pre-identified morning- and evening-type people were randomly assigned to participate in morning or evening sessions. Results supported an interactional asynchrony hypothesis that individuals are more likely to confess during “off-peak” periods (i.e., evening-types in the morning and morning-types in the evening). This interaction was obtained for both high- and low-seriousness transgressions. These results suggest that chronotype asynchrony constitutes a significant risk factor for false confessions and the wrongful convictions that often follow.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

We thank Yueran Yang for her assistance with some analyses.

Notes

¹We had sought to test participants earlier in the morning and later at night, but the Institutional Review Board did not permit experimental sessions to be scheduled at these hours.