Comparing the effects of explicit and implicit false-evidence ploys on Mock Jurors' verdicts, sentencing recommendations, and perceptions of police interrogation

Abstract

In police interrogation, an explicit false claim to have evidence raises important legal and constitutional questions. Therefore, some interrogation manuals recommend implicit false-evidence ploys (FEP) that ask suspects about potential evidence without making a direct claim to possess the evidence. Similar to the hypotheses in a recent study of implicit FEP and confession rates, we hypothesized that individuals would perceive implicit FEP as less coercive and deceptive when compared to explicit FEP that involve direct claims of false evidence. Although mock jurors rated all FEP as highly deceptive and coercive and as more deceptive than controls, we found that participants did not view implicit and explicit FEP differently and that ploy specificity (implicit or explicit) failed to affect verdicts or recommended sentences. These findings suggest that although interrogation trainers and scholars in law and psychology discriminate between the methods, jurors do not.

Keywords:

• juror decision-making
• interrogation
• confession
• false confession
• police interrogation

Notes

1. To meet the N specified by the subsequent power analysis, the control condition included data from 36 novel participants and 37 participants from a previously published study (Woody & Forrest, 2009) who read expert testimony and evaluated identical interrogation transcripts that did not involve police deception. No significant differences existed between these data sets (verdict: X ² = 0.01, p = 0.93, Φ = 0.01; guilt, sentencing, deception, and coercion: all independent t < 0.67, all p > 0.51, all d < 0.16).