Studying Confessions: A Confederate-Free, Cheating-Based Laboratory Research Paradigm

ABSTRACT

This study introduced a novel laboratory false confession paradigm to research on true and false confession. Participants were 91 undergraduates who were given the opportunity to cheat on a research task. All were ultimately accused of cheating. Of participants innocent of cheating, 17.9% confessed. Results suggest that the current paradigm complements existing paradigms. In addition, this paradigm has useful strengths. With appropriate modifications, it can be used to study rates of false confession among youth and allows for manipulation of paradigm-specific factors so that future research can study which of these factors lead to true confessions but minimize false confessions.

KEYWORDS:

• False confession
• true confession
• Carbonless Anagram Method

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Dr. Nicole Ruedy for providing the materials for the Carbonless Anagram Method and for her invaluable input on study procedures for this project. We would also like to thank Keisha April, Rachel Bomysoad, Alisha Desai, Sarah Fishel, Claire Lankford, Mina Ratkalkar, and Stephanie Singer for their work collecting the data for this research. This study was funded through dissertation grants from the American Psychology-Law Society and the American Academy of Forensic Psychology. Some data and ideas from this article were presented at the American Psychology-Law Society annual conference in Memphis, TN (March, 2018). The authors have no conflicts of interest or financial disclosures to report. Data is available on request from the corresponding author.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data are available from the corresponding author, EH-C, upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the American Psychology-Law Society and by the American Academy of Forensic Psychology.