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Interrogations are a form of interviewing that has been around for a very long time throughout the world. People from fields such as police, military, and intelligence agencies have employed the technique to extract a confession or incriminating statements. Interrogations consist of an array of techniques ranging from developing a rapport and so forth. During an interrogation a suspect or eyewitness are questioned authorities. Interrogations are more frequently utilized by police officers. As seen in a plethora of popular television shows, it appears that all it takes to get a confession or information from a person is a little screaming and chairing throwing, but there is way more to interrogations. When dealing with interrogations police officers are very aware of how to elicit specific information from suspects and eyewitnesses. It is way more scientific than the eye may see, when an interrogation is occurring false memories are easily created by eyewitnesses and suspects because of leading questions and source misattributions that cause for memory errors.
False Memories
False information can influence people’s beliefs and memories. When people are given false information it becomes easier for them to report witnessing an event that never happened, or to give inaccurate reports about events that have happened. But in recent years, memory researchers have used an especially compelling form of misinformation—digitally manipulated photos and videos—to elicit false beliefs and memories in people. (Klaver, Lee, & Rose). Based on false memory studies, scientists have argued that false suggestions induce people to testify about events they never witnessed. (Wade, Nash & Green, 2010). When it comes to the real world eyewitness report ...
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...s neither performed nor imagined. (Kelley, 2009).
The recognition accuracy for old events was calculated as the proportion of performed and imagined events that were correctly recognized as old, regardless of whether they were correctly attributed to having been performed or imagined. (Kelley, 2009). Even with a 1-week delay, the percentage of performed actions or imagined performing in phase 1 that were correctly remembered as old was relatively high 91.1%, and overall false alarm rates were relatively low at 4.7%. (Kelley, 2009). However people remembered that an event happened does not mean they correctly remembered how it happened. (Kelley, 2009). Source accuracy was somewhat impaired, though well above chance with the average performance of 88.8% and did not differ significantly between performed actions (M=88.7%) and imagined actions (M=89.0%). (Kelley, 2009).
In the Norfolk Four case, Ford began his interrogatories by a prior assumption that the four suspects were involved in the case. As Chapman (2013) noted, “ the interrogator will use whatever means necessary to elicit a confession, and not only will the suspect confess, but they will form false memories of the crimes they did not commit,” (p.162). Joseph Dick, one of the four suspects in the Norfolk Four case, claimed that due to the harsh interrogatories, he accepted the label put on him and began to believe that he committed the crime. Accordingly, Joseph Dick and the others began telling false narratives of the way they committed the crime. Even though, their narratives contradicted with evidence and facts of the actual murder, Ford proceeded to psychologically abuse the four suspects in order to hear what he wanted to hear.
After reviewing the article “Inside Interrogation: The Lie, The Bluff, and False Confessions”, it became very evident the huge problem with interrogations and false confessions in the criminal justice system is with false confession. Jennifer T. Perillo and Saul M. Kassin crafted three distinct experiments to try and better understand false confessions and how trues the actual numbers in real life are. What Perillo and Kassin were trying to prove is that “the bluff technique should elicit confessions from perpetrators but not from innocents” (Perillo, Kassin 2010). What is called the “Bluff Technique” is an interrogation technique that uses a sort of threat or hint that there is certain proof that a person will think is more of a promise for
Roediger III, H. L., Watson, J. M., McDermott, K. B., & Gallo, D. A. (2001). Factors that determine false recall: A multiple regression analysis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8(3), 385-407.
One of the last types of ways investigators are coached to detect deception is in the behavioral attitudes of a person being interviewed such as being unconcerned or over anxious (Kassin, 2005). The success rate of looking for these cues are very successful in telling if an individual is being deceitful and has surpassed any laboratory tests conducted on the subject. The laboratory test however did reveal some interesting facts. The research showed that people who had training and experience did not score better than the control group who received no training. In fact all individuals scored at the chance level with the people who had training scored just above chance or at the chance level. To check if special training in the detection of deception was more accurate a study ...
Humans have an incredible capability for thinking and memory. We can remember events from our past, for our future, and of things that have no relative meaning to ourselves. These memories can be traced back to different systems of our brains through a process of encoding, storage, and retrieval. As part of the retrieval process, memories can be remembered with or without their sources. As research has found, our memories are not labeled or tagged with their origin (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay 1993). Because of this, our memory has developed a process called source monitoring. This is how we link our memories to the source that they developed from, usually using specific characteristics and general knowledge of the memory. For example, source monitoring includes identifying who told you something, whether or not you saw an event in real life, the time of the event and whether you told something to your friend or only thought about telling it. The source-monitoring framework for the process involved in pinpointing the origin of information by Johnson and colleagues, explains both vertical and distorted memory with a common set of principles. First, a specific memory consists of specific characteristics including spatial, temporal, and perceptual details. Secondly, the memories can differ in characteristics that can be used to find the origin. More extensive source monitoring can involve beliefs about memory and cognition as well as retrieving more information from memory and finding the source of the memory given these beliefs, other specific characteristics or general knowledge (Johnson et al. 1993). Sometimes these beliefs aren't always accurate. Because some people may be influenced by their personal ideologies during retriev...
There are nine steps to the interrogation process, but before the steps are implemented, there’s an initial interview to determine guilt or innocence. During this time, the interrogator attempts to create a rapport with the suspect by using casual conversation to establish a non-threating atmosphere. Often time, people are more comfortable when they feel they can relate to the person they are talking to, so the interrogator may claim to share some common beliefs or interest. If the suspect starts talking to the interrogator about harmless things, it becomes harder to stop talking or start lying later, after when the discussion turns to crime (dying words). In the initial investigation, the investigator will observe the suspects verbal and non-verbal reactions, this information will help establish a baseline reaction before the stress commences; later on in the investigation, the baseline will help the interrogator determine if the suspect is telling the truth or lying. Now the investigation can proceed with the nine-step process. First step, direct positive confrontation, involves directly confronting the suspect with a statement that it is known that he or she committed the crime. Often, the police lie and describe nonexistent evidence that points to the suspect as the offender. The second step, theme development, is the step in which the police present a hypothesis about the
Discuss the differences between the terms interview and interrogation. Interviewing is talking to people, who are not suspects in a crime but who knows something and knows who is involved in the crime. Also getting their information, and asking questions to them, and knowing when to translate or interpret. The main people involved when getting information at a crime scene is the witnesses, criminal and the accuser (Orthman, Hess, 2013). Interrogation questioning of the suspects, once the suspect is known of their identity and where they reside the person who is the participant of the crime could make a statement, confession, refusal, corroborated with self-supporting documentation that could yield a guilty allegation or it could gather a determining guilt (Orthman, Hess, 2013).
Elizabeth Loftus, is a psychologist, mainly concerned with how subsequent information can affect an eyewitness’s testimony. Loftus has focused on misleading information in both the difference in wording of questions and how these questions can influence eyewitness testimony. This research is important because frequently, eyewitness testimony is a crucial element in criminal proceedings. Throughout Loftus’s career she has found a witness’s memory is highly flexible and subject to being influenced. The classic study by Loftus and Palmer (1974), illustrates that eyewitness testimony can be influenced by leading questions and ultimately proved unreliable.
Many of today’s interrogation models being utilized in police investigations have an impact on false confessions. The model that has been in the public eye recently is the social psychological process model of interrogation known as the “The Reid Technique.” There are two alternatives used by the police today to replace the Reid Technique, one is the PEACE Model and the other is Cognitive Interviewing. These methods are not interrogation techniques like Reid but interview processes.
Wells, G. L., Memon, A., & Penrod, S. D. (2006). Eyewitness evidence: Improving its probative value. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 7(2), 45-75. doi: 10.1111/j.1529-1006.2006.00027.x
Susa and Meissner (in press ) conducted a similar experiment; however, the settle distinction resonates in the retrieval process of the data. These researchers provided a brief video clip to participants of an offender committing bank robbery, and data recovery were manipulated between the two conditions: a one-week delay in description retrieval, and half hour delay in description retrieval of the perpetrator’s identity. Although immediate retrieval is commonly coined as the best technique to providing an accurate description, many argue the immediate retrieval may, in fact, contribute to the effects of verbal overshadowing. The results of this experimental study were similar to the immediate description and delayed description study, which evidently supports the effects of verbal overshadowing (Susa & Meissner in press). This study illustrates that the effect of verbal overshadowing is a pervasive occurrence in the immediate description retrieval of eyewitness testimonies opposed to the delayed description retrieval in accurately identifying the correct perpetrator. In essence, collectively eyewitness remembrance possesses ambivalences, no matter the person providing the depiction of the events occurred (also see, Brown C., Lloyd-Jones, T. J., &
Human memory is flexible and prone to suggestion. “Human memory, while remarkable in many ways, does not operate like a video camera” (Walker, 2013). In fact, human memory is quite the opposite of a video camera; it can be greatly influenced and even often distorted by interactions with its surroundings (Walker, 2013). Memory is separated into three different phases. The first phase is acquisition, which is when information is first entered into memory or the perception of an event (Samaha, 2011). The next phase is retention. Retention is the process of storing information during the period of time between the event and the recollection of a piece of information from that event (Samaha, 2011). The last stage is retrieval. Retrieval is recalling stored information about an event with the purpose of making an identification of a person in that event (Samaha, 2011).
According to Sternberg (1999), memory is the extraction of past experiences for information to be used in the present. The retrieval of memory is essential in every aspect of daily life, whether it is for academics, work or social purposes. However, many often take memory for granted and assume that it can be relied on because of how realistic it appears in the mind. This form of memory is also known as flashbulb memory. (Brown and Kulik, 1977). The question of whether our memory is reliably accurate has been shown to have implications in providing precise details of past events. (The British Psychological Association, 2011). In this essay, I would put forth arguments that human memory, in fact, is not completely reliable in providing accurate depictions of our past experiences. Evidence can be seen in the following two studies that support these arguments by examining episodic memory in humans. The first study is by Loftus and Pickrell (1995) who found that memory can be modified by suggestions. The second study is by Naveh-Benjamin and Craik (1995) who found that there is a predisposition for memory to decline with increasing age.
Leo, R and Ofshe R. The Social Psychology of Police Interrogation: The Theory and Classification of True and False Confessions. 16 Studies in Law, Politics and Society 189,
Eyewitnesses of an event, whether it is traumatic or not, can create false memories and insist a specific event happened when in reality, it did not happen. Their memories are vulnerable to an assortment of errors in remembering precise details and their memories can be manipulated, causing a distorted occurrence that on no occasion happened. After reading three research papers on memory blindness with eyewitnesses, it has been proven that eyewitness accounts are not completely accurate and also shows how attributions, choice blindness, and certain circumstances play a role when they are asked to recall the event.