You Can Be Persuaded To Confess To An Invented Crime, Study Finds - Polidicks

[QUOTE][IMG]http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2015/01/29/ap368454491440_wide-3490a6e3e5e05c17fdaf4dde5e9faee18d5ab80c-s800-c85.jpg[/IMG] [I]Opening statements are delivered in June 1990 in the Central Park rape trial in New York in this artist's rendering. The defendants — including Yusef Salaam (from left), Antron McCray and Raymond Santana, shown here — were convicted and imprisoned in part on what were later found to be false confessions. A new study shows it's surprisingly easy to implant memories of committing a crime.[/I][/QUOTE] [QUOTE]A 28-year-old investment banker was brutally raped and beaten while jogging in New York's Central Park in April 1989. The city went berserk. Five boys of color, ages 14 to 16, soon confessed and were convicted — but not before being called "animals," "crazed misfits" and "park marauders" by anyone with a mouth or pen. Indeed, the boys were treated like animals, and they served up to 13 years in prison before being exonerated based on "shocking" new DNA evidence and a real confession from serial rapist Matias Reyes. The Central Park Five had falsely confessed — because, they said, they'd been coerced by police. Debra Jenson, 2, hanging from a hook in her grandmother's kitchen. "Over the next 35 years, I watched each of my cousins, then my own children and my cousins' children be dangled from that hook. Between the photo and watching it happen to others, this is a powerful 'fake memory' for me." Don't think that it could happen to you? Sorry, but a first-of-its-kind study shows that it could — easily. With a little misinformation, encouragement and three hours, researchers were able to convince 70 percent of the study's participants that they'd committed a crime. And the college-aged students who participated in the study didn't merely confess — they recalled full-blown, detailed experiences, says lead researcher Julia Shaw, a lecturer in forensic psychology from the University of Bedfordshire. The results were "definitely unexpected," says Shaw, who predicted only a 30 percent rate. So, how did they plant false memories of a crimes in young adults who never had even been in contact with the police? Shaw and Stephen Porter, a forensic psychologist at the University of British Columbia, first got a few facts about the faux criminal's teen years — the name of her best friend, hometown, etc. — from parents or a guardian. (An ethical committee said it was OK.) Then, during three 45-minute interviews, Shaw extracted information from the students about one true experience (which they remembered) and one fabricated experience (of which she convinced them). After a few hours of feeding the students tidbits of the verified info, she added them up to equal her fabricated crime — and a majority of students were persuaded: They were criminals. One student, when told she had assaulted a classmate in her teens, "elaborately" filled in all the blanks: what weapon she used (a rock), what the argument was over (a boy), what she was having for dinner when the police came looking for her — even the color of the officers' hair. False memories don't happen quite like Inception — they're more like a Wikipedia page that can be edited by you and others, says Elizabeth Loftus, a cognitive psychologist at the University of California, Irvine. Once people believe something to be true, their imagination kicks in, and they begin to visualize the situation using past experiences from themselves, others, even movies, she says; when the patchwork of memory gets stitched together and internalized, truth and fiction become indistinguishable. And police use Shaw's tactics, says Mark Godsey, co-founder and director of the Ohio Innocence Project, an advocacy group for the wrongly convicted that has dealt with cases involving false confessions. A really heavy-handed interrogation could consist of all the features of Shaw's study — and have real criminal consequences. Sure, "the system isn't perfect," says Albie Esparza, public information officer for the San Francisco Police Department. But the idea that police use the good cop, bad cop routine is "very Hollywood," he says. In fact, it's standard procedure to record interrogations either using video or audio, he says, preventing fishy business.[/QUOTE] [url]http://www.npr.org/2015/01/29/382483367/you-can-be-convinced-to-confess-to-an-invented-crime-study-finds[/url]

I thought this was common knowledge. In the same vein as torture being ineffective, you can get people to do or say pretty much anything under the right circumstances.

It's weird how many things the justice system here relies on (witness testimony, pushing for confessions, line-ups) that turn out to be totally shit dunno that there's any better options though

[QUOTE=Mister Sandman;47058642]It's weird how many things the justice system here relies on (witness testimony, pushing for confessions, line-ups) that turn out to be totally shit dunno that there's any better options though[/QUOTE] except they don't. ever since the turn of the century more and more juries have been leaning towards physical evidence instead of witness testimonies (ferguson as an example. not enough evidence = no trial).

[QUOTE=ferrus;47058633]I thought this was common knowledge. In the same vein as torture being ineffective, you can get people to do or say pretty much anything under the right circumstances.[/QUOTE] That's different. People would say anything while being tortured so that they wouldn't be tortured anymore. This isn't people admitting to crimes to get less of a sentence, this is people actually believing that they committed a crime that never happened, or in the rape case a crime they weren't a part of.

If you waterboard someone enough they'll say anything you want them to...

If you threaten a suspect with the tossing salad punishment, they'll be confessing everything.

We all know that torture and related activities can coerce people into making false confessions. However, this article is about a "first of its kind study" that "70% of people" can have entirely bogus yet detailed memories of committing a crime written into their minds in three hours. Bullshit.

I've heard of false memories being made before but I'm not convinced yet that it can happen to this extent.

[QUOTE=Helix Snake;47058823]I've heard of false memories being made before but I'm not convinced yet that it can happen to this extent.[/QUOTE] "False memories" can be as simple as playing on the details you're unsure of, so that you will confess. Except by mind-breaking torture, I don't see why anyone is going to have actual false memories.

[QUOTE=Helix Snake;47058823]I've heard of false memories being made before but I'm not convinced yet that it can happen to this extent.[/QUOTE] You just have to add a great element of fear or stress, it seems.

This was already proven quite well in a large-scale study performed by a Soviet research agency called NKVD.

chicago pd is infamous for this [quote]Two cases we examined involve several teenage boys who were arrested and they say forced or tricked into confessing to violent crimes they never committed. Each spent nearly half their lives in prison. They are free now, and told us their story together for the first time.[/quote] [quote]Robert Taylor: Man, you being cuffed up and beat on by the police. Man, them people can get you to do-- do what they want you to do. Byron Pitts: What did they make you do? Robert Taylor: Made me sign. I mean, that murdered me. It killed me inside.[/quote] [quote]Chicago has a long history of false confessions. Two years ago, former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge was convicted on federal charges related to torture. Including, the use of electric shock during questioning and one where he gained a confession after he placed a gun to a suspect's head. So far, more than 85 convictions have been overturned in Illinois since 1989, many as a result of police misconduct.[/quote] [quote]James Harden: They had the statement already wrote up and the man say, "Do you want to go home and sleep in your bed tonight?" So I said, "Hell, yeah." So that's how easy it is for a person to sign their life away just the thought-- just being taken away from your parents and say, "OK, I want to go home and sleep in my bed tonight. Hell yeah, I fixing to sign it."[/quote] [url]http://www.cbsnews.com/news/chicago-the-false-confession-capital/3/[/url]

I heard rumors about therapists using techniques like that to convince their patients of imaginary traumas, but I had no idea regular cops could do it as well.

It depends who well a person knows himself. If you truly knew yourself, and was concious of your life. Nobody could get you be somebody your not, even for a short time to confess to something you didn't do.

This really doesn't surprise me. Fear and shock are powerful feelings and when those feelings have stress piled on in an active setting. I wonder what happens to the human brain on a chemical level, if there's some corruption of memory through stress hormones being active during a serious attempt at memory recall. I know i've seen some evidence of people being put into "hypnosis" and therapists capable of creating entirely alternate memories for them but I don't think that's the same as this.

[QUOTE=Superwafflez;47058674]If you waterboard someone enough they'll say anything you want them to...[/QUOTE] Except that's not what this is about, memory is piss poor, if someone makes a convincing enough argument your memory will effectively rewrite itself and all you have to do is suggest something dumb like the car you saw yesterday morning was blue and not red, boom, suddenly you saw the suspects blue volkswagen.

It works. I know someone who was pressured into signing a confession in a similar way.

[QUOTE=ferrus;47058633]I thought this was common knowledge. In the same vein as torture being ineffective, you can get people to do or say pretty much anything under the right circumstances.[/QUOTE] Too true, the subject would likely tell you what you'd want to hear just to get the jumper cables off of their nuts.

[QUOTE=Phil5991;47059503]I heard rumors about therapists using techniques like that to convince their patients of imaginary traumas, but I had no idea regular cops could do it as well.[/QUOTE] Heard those stories as well. Therapists injecting the idea that a patients' parents raped or abused them.

[QUOTE=Grimhound;47061037]Heard those stories as well. Therapists injecting the idea that a patients' parents raped or abused them.[/QUOTE] Yeah there was a big thing in the US in the 80's where a lot of folk going to psychiatrists and the like were being convinced that their fathers habitually raped and abused them. They were pretty much all bullshit.

[QUOTE=Ezhik;47059248]This was already proven quite well in a large-scale study performed by a Soviet research agency called NKVD.[/QUOTE] I'm not sure I'd call the NKVD a research agency. [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD[/url]

[QUOTE=BeardyDuck;47058646]except they don't. ever since the turn of the century more and more juries have been leaning towards physical evidence instead of witness testimonies (ferguson as an example. not enough evidence = no trial).[/QUOTE] uhh Ferguson wasnt because of lack of evidence, it was because the evidence contradicted most of the witnesses The physical evidence trend is called the [I]CSI Effect[/I].

[QUOTE=Carnotite;47061134]I'm not sure I'd call the NKVD a research agency. [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD[/url][/QUOTE] Sarcasm, my friend. They did however spend a good deal of time experimenting with scientific techniques to obtain confessions both true and false, indeed you might call them the foremost experts in the field.