Psychological Causes of Criminal Confessions: The Role of Interrogation Myopia

DNA证明和实验室实验表明，犯罪嫌疑人在接受警察讯问时有时会谎报罪行。这项研究将通过测试一种新的理论模型的预测，促进对嫌疑人决定认罪的过程的理解。该模型提出，警方审讯引起的压力，使嫌疑人狭隘地集中在事件和条件下操作的即时审讯的情况下，同时转移他们的注意力远离因素，是暂时遥远的，如未来的后果，他们可能面临的，如果被定罪。最终，这种注意力集中的缩小被假设为创造了一种审讯近视的心理状态，即嫌疑人的选择太多地受到在即时审讯情况下操作的社会和情境影响的驱动，而太少地受到他们的长期利益的影响。三个实验将研究通过在学术环境中作弊的指控引起的压力是否会影响人们注意和记住与学术不端行为后果直接相关的信息的程度，他们对鼓励他们坦白的社会压力的脆弱程度，以及他们的坦白决定是否受到直接后果的影响（例如，现在逃离不愉快的情况）而不是未来的后果（例如，（避免将来因犯错而受到惩罚）。这些实验的独特之处在于，它们根据心血管活动指数的生理学来评估压力，这是对警察审讯的一种反应，迄今为止几乎没有受到经验主义的关注。这项研究的结果将促进对导致嫌疑人在拘留警察审讯期间认罪的心理过程的理解，从而有助于旨在提高供词证据诊断价值的改革努力。

DNA exonerations and laboratory experiments reveal that criminal suspects will sometimes falsely confess to crimes when interrogated by the police. This research will advance understanding of the processes that underlie suspects' decisions to confess by testing the predictions of a new theorietical model of confessions. The model proposes that stress elicited by police interrogation causes suspects to focus narrowly on the events and conditions operating in the immediate interrogation situation while simultaneously diverting their attention away from factors that are temporally remote, such as the future consequences that they may face if convicted. Ultimately, this narrowing of attentional focus is hypothesized to create a psychological state of interrogation myopia whereby suspects' choices are driven too much by the social and situational influences that are operating during the immediate interrogation situation, and too little by their long-term interests. Three experiments will examine whether stress, elicited through an accusation of cheating in an academic setting, influences how much people attend to and remember information that is directly relevant to consequences of academic misconduct, how vulnerable they are to social pressures that encourage them to confess, and whether their confession decisions are influenced more by immediate consequences (e.g., escaping an unpleasant situation now) than future consequences (e.g., avoiding punishment for wrong-doing in the future). The experiments are unique in that they assess stress in terms of physiology indexed by cardiovascular activity, a response to police interrogation that has received almost no empirical attention to date. The findings of this research will advance understanding of the psychological processes that lead suspects to confess to crimes during custodial police interrogations, thereby aiding reform efforts that are designed to improve the diagnostic value of confession evidence.