How downplaying or exaggerating crime severity in a confession affects perceived guilt

Abstract

This study investigates how judgments of guilt are influenced by factual errors in confessions that either amplify or downplay the severity of the crime. Participants read a confession statement and police report in which either the confession was consistent with the police report, the suspect admitted to a worse crime or the suspect admitted to a lesser crime. Mediation analyses showed that, compared to consistent confessions, both types of directional errors reduced judgments of guilt. Inconsistencies that made the suspect look better – but not those that made the suspect look worse –also increased judgments of guilt via a direct effect. Confessions that contain errors that appear to exaggerate the severity of the crime prompt no higher judgments of suspect guilt; however, errors in confessions that are perceived to downplay the severity of the crime can prompt an increased perception of suspect guilt compared to a consistent confession.

Keywords:

• attribution theory
• false confession
• juror decision-making
• inconsistencies
• wrongful conviction

Notes

1 We note that these ideas are consistent with the story model of juror decision-making (Pennington & Hastie, 1986, 1992). According to this model, jurors construct an internal narrative about a case and then use individual pieces of evidence to confirm or alter this narrative. The notion that jurors make attributions about the reason for inconsistencies in confession evidence – and that these attributions shape the inferences drawn from the confession evidence – fits well in the story model.

2 In terms of dichotomous verdicts, as expected, the majority of participants gave a guilty verdict (85.1%). There is no significant difference in guilty verdicts between the consistent (90.6%), better (83.3%) and worse (81.3%) conditions, n = 94, χ²(2) = 1.22, p = .54.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Community Law and Policing Research Group and the Institute for Social Change at the University of Tasmania, Australia; and by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.