Innocent People Can Be Convinced They Committed A Crime That Never Happened
Saturday, January 17, 2015 - 14:00
in Psychology & Sociology
Evidence from some wrongful-conviction cases suggests that suspects can be questioned in ways that lead them to falsely believe in and confess to committing crimes they didn't actually commit. The new work provides lab-based evidence for this phenomenon, showing that innocent adult participants can be convinced, over the course of a few hours, that they had perpetrated crimes as serious as assault with a weapon in their teenage years. The research in Psychological Science indicates that the participants came to internalize the stories they were told, providing rich and detailed descriptions of events that never actually took place. read more