False confessions

Although false confessions would seem to run counter to their own interests, innocent suspects do occasionally admit to having committed even serious crimes. This article describes individual differences in susceptibility to interrogative influence and mechanisms through which interrogation tactics can induce false confessions. It will also show that there is no simple way of distinguishing false from true confessions, which is partly due to the lack of verbatim records of interviews with suspects. In some cases false confessions can even negatively impact on the gathering and evaluation of further evidence and in turn this seemingly independent evidence seems to validate the false confession if this is later retracted. Psychological expertise may well help to clarify individual cases; however, any uncritical transfer of the credibility assessment developed to evaluate witness testimony, without taking the specific conditions of interviews with suspects into account, may well lead to false results.