Why Would They Falsely Confess Why on earth would
an innocent person falsely confess to committing a crime To most people, it
just doesn’t seem logical. But it is logical, say experts, if you understand
what call happen in a police interrogation (审讯) room. Under the
right conditions, people’s minds are susceptible (易受影响的) to influence, and the
pressure put on suspects during police grillings (盘问) is enormous. (1)
"The pressure is important to understand, because otherwise it’s
impossible to understand why someone would say he did something he didn’t do.
The answer is: to put an end to an uncomfortable situation that will continue
until he does confess." Developmental psychologist Allison
Redlich recently conducted a laboratory determine how likely people are to
confess to things they didn’t do. (2) The researchers then
intentionally crashed the computers and accused the participants of hitting the
"alt" key to see if they would sign a statement falsely taking
responsibility. Redlich’s findings clearly demonstrate how easy
it can be to get people to falsely confess: 59 percent of the young adults in
the experiment immediately confessed (3) . Of the 15-to
16-year-olds, 72 percent signed confessions, as did 78 per cent of the 12-to
13-year-olds. "There’s no question that young people are more at
risk," says Saul Kassin, Professor at Williams College, who has done similar
studies with similar results. (4) Both
Kassin and Redlich note that the entire "interrogation" in their experiments
consisted of a simple accusation — not hours of aggressive questioning — and
still, most participants falsely confessed. Because of the
stress of a police interrogation, they conclude, suspects can become convinced
that falsely confessing is the easiest way out of a bad situation. (5)
A. In her experiment, participants were seated at
computers and told not to hit "Mt" key, because doing so would crash the
systems. B. "In some ways," says Kassin, "false confession
becomes a rational decision." C. "It’s a little like somebody’s
working on them with a dental (牙齿的) drill," says Franklin Zimring, a law
professor at the University of Calitbmia at Berkeley. D. "But
adults are highly vulnerable too." E. How could an innocent
person admit to doing something he didn’t do F. Redlich also
found that the younger the participant, the more likely a false
confession.