Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1989, Page 4
As treated in the leading text on interrogation tactics, Inbau, Reid, and Buckley (1986), the
process of eliciting a confession is a tour de force of social influence. According to these
writers, a guilty suspect must be “persuaded” to confess. The idealized guilty suspect is
conceived to be a rational actor who can be controlled by manipulating his expected
outcomes for different decisions. The keys to persuasion are:
1. Convincing the suspect that his situation is hopeless because the evidence against him is
sufficient to produce a successful prosecution. To this end, trickery, invention of
evidence, and gross distortion of the significance of the evidence pointing to the suspect
may be used to manipulate expectations.
2. Manipulating the suspect‟s emotional state by attempting to make the stress of
continuing to deny responsibility greater than the suspect‟s anxiety about admitting
guilt. To accomplish this, tactics designed to manipulate the suspect‟s emotions are
brought into play to induce feelings of guilt and distress. It is hoped that these aversive
emotional experiences will drive the suspect to seek forgiveness through confession.
3. Manipulating the suspect‟s expectations about the level of punishment that will follow
from immediately confessing as opposed to continuing to hold to a denial of guilt. The
supposed advantage to be gained through cooperation and immediate confession is
represented as the ability to demonstrate remorse and demonstrate the suspect‟s good
character. The implication of all of this is that the suspect will be less severely punished
if he confesses.
Inbau, Reid, and Buckley suggest that it is permissible to deceive a suspect in order to
create the belief that he has entered into a deal in which lenient treatment is to be
exchanged for a confession. These authors caution, however, that this is legally permissible
only as long as the deal is not real.
Inbau, Reid and Buckley repeatedly warn their readers that the interrogation techniques
they teach (as well as certain other techniques whose use is well known) can elicit false
confessions from innocent suspects. They do not, however, provide interrogators with
either an understanding of why this can occur or sufficient insight into the phenomenon to
identify when it may be happening in front of them.
The four people whose interrogations are commented on here are victims of the
unconscious use of the sorts of interrogation tactics commonly practiced throughout the
United States. All four displayed substantial belief change and, for varying periods of time,
became convinced that they had committed the crimes of which they were being accused.
They each came to believe in their guilt and acted on this belief by confessing. They
confessed despite having no memory of the crime that they had supposedly committed.
This report analyzes the process through which these individuals were influenced to believe
in their guilt without the benefit of having any recall of their crimes.
Each of the false confessions discussed here was elicited in response to techniques which
interacted with the personalities and vulnerabilities of the victims.7 This interaction resulted
in reactions far different from what might be expected due to the routine application of the
tactics of psychological coercion generally present in police interrogations.
Zimbardo (1968, 1971) has analyzed the generally coercive aspects of the setting and
tactics of police interrogations. He identifies five categories of variables through which
substantial psychological pressure is brought to bear on suspects during an interrogation.
Text writers, social psychologists, and experienced interrogators appear to agree that the
interrogation setting is an arena in which powerful influence forces are brought into play for
the purpose of manipulating suspects. (There are, however, great differences of opinion
among observers about the desirability of this state of affairs).
As treated in the leading text on interrogation tactics, Inbau, Reid, and Buckley (1986), the
process of eliciting a confession is a tour de force of social influence. According to these
writers, a guilty suspect must be “persuaded” to confess. The idealized guilty suspect is
conceived to be a rational actor who can be controlled by manipulating his expected
outcomes for different decisions. The keys to persuasion are:
1. Convincing the suspect that his situation is hopeless because the evidence against him is
sufficient to produce a successful prosecution. To this end, trickery, invention of
evidence, and gross distortion of the significance of the evidence pointing to the suspect
may be used to manipulate expectations.
2. Manipulating the suspect‟s emotional state by attempting to make the stress of
continuing to deny responsibility greater than the suspect‟s anxiety about admitting
guilt. To accomplish this, tactics designed to manipulate the suspect‟s emotions are
brought into play to induce feelings of guilt and distress. It is hoped that these aversive
emotional experiences will drive the suspect to seek forgiveness through confession.
3. Manipulating the suspect‟s expectations about the level of punishment that will follow
from immediately confessing as opposed to continuing to hold to a denial of guilt. The
supposed advantage to be gained through cooperation and immediate confession is
represented as the ability to demonstrate remorse and demonstrate the suspect‟s good
character. The implication of all of this is that the suspect will be less severely punished
if he confesses.
Inbau, Reid, and Buckley suggest that it is permissible to deceive a suspect in order to
create the belief that he has entered into a deal in which lenient treatment is to be
exchanged for a confession. These authors caution, however, that this is legally permissible
only as long as the deal is not real.
Inbau, Reid and Buckley repeatedly warn their readers that the interrogation techniques
they teach (as well as certain other techniques whose use is well known) can elicit false
confessions from innocent suspects. They do not, however, provide interrogators with
either an understanding of why this can occur or sufficient insight into the phenomenon to
identify when it may be happening in front of them.
The four people whose interrogations are commented on here are victims of the
unconscious use of the sorts of interrogation tactics commonly practiced throughout the
United States. All four displayed substantial belief change and, for varying periods of time,
became convinced that they had committed the crimes of which they were being accused.
They each came to believe in their guilt and acted on this belief by confessing. They
confessed despite having no memory of the crime that they had supposedly committed.
This report analyzes the process through which these individuals were influenced to believe
in their guilt without the benefit of having any recall of their crimes.
Each of the false confessions discussed here was elicited in response to techniques which
interacted with the personalities and vulnerabilities of the victims.7 This interaction resulted
in reactions far different from what might be expected due to the routine application of the
tactics of psychological coercion generally present in police interrogations.
Zimbardo (1968, 1971) has analyzed the generally coercive aspects of the setting and
tactics of police interrogations. He identifies five categories of variables through which
substantial psychological pressure is brought to bear on suspects during an interrogation.
Text writers, social psychologists, and experienced interrogators appear to agree that the
interrogation setting is an arena in which powerful influence forces are brought into play for
the purpose of manipulating suspects. (There are, however, great differences of opinion
among observers about the desirability of this state of affairs).
