Do laypeople recognize youth as a risk factor for false confession? A test of the ‘common sense’ hypothesis

Abstract

In a survey of confession experts, 94% agreed that youth is a risk factor for false confession, but only 37% felt that jurors understand this. To date, no study has tested the latter by comparing laypeople’s perceptions of juvenile and adult suspects. To address this gap, Experiment 1 participants read a lengthy (i.e. interrogation and confession) or abridged (i.e. confession-only) transcript of an ostensibly juvenile or adult suspect’s interrogation. Transcript length affected perceived pressure but not guilt judgments. Suspect age had little effect, with 75% of participants misjudging the juvenile as guilty. Experiment 2 then tested how expert testimony affects judgments of juvenile suspects. Participants read a lengthy or abridged interrogation transcript, with or without testimony from a juvenile confession expert. Expert testimony somewhat impacted guilt judgments but did not influence perceptions of the interrogation. Implications for interrogation practices, trial procedure and future research are discussed.

Keywords:

• expert testimony
• false confessions
• interrogations
• juvenile justice

Ethical standards

Declaration of conflicts of interest

Lauren J. Grove has declared no conflicts of interest

Jeff Kukucka has declared no conflicts of interest

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Acknowledgments

Portions of this work were submitted by Lauren J. Grove in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Master of Arts degree at Towson University. We thank Caroline Crocker-Otis and Saul Kassin for providing the interrogation transcript used in both studies. Experiment 2 was supported by funding from Towson University.

Notes

1 In our final sample, the Lengthy (n = 64) and Abridged (n = 63) transcript conditions did not differ in terms of age, t(125) = 1.03, p = .307, gender, χ²(1) = 0.95, p = .331, education level, Z = 0.15, p = .881, or jury service, χ²(1) = 0.10, p = .748. However, there was a slight racial difference, such that there were more Black participants in the Lengthy condition (n = 16; 25.0%) than in the Abridged condition (n = 4; 6.3%), χ²(1) = 9.64, p = .047.